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new ways to motivate your minions!

miss fortune

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I run a small team of people at work and I'm always looking for new ways to motivate them to acheive things... bribery, positive feedback... creepy Sting like tendancies to let them know that I'll be watching them... all kinds of things!

However, I am not the be all, end all on information on figuring out how to motivate groups of people and if anyone else has some suggestions they would be quite appreciated :)
 

redcheerio

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I read a book called Motivate Your Minions (j/k) no actually called Drive: the Surprising Truth About Motivation or something like that. I thought it was really good and was tempted to anonymously send a free copy to one of the managers at my last company. Even just the reviews of it on Amazon summarize it nicely and are useful.

Do your minions do mundane work, or work that requires thought and creativity? To oversimplify, if they do work that requires thought and creativity, then they need lots of freedom to learn and excel. If it's mundane, then they need empathy, encouragement, and incentives/ rewards.
 

miss fortune

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they do sales in a position where they are left independent of someone looking over thier shoulder all day long, so I always need to come up with ideas to get them feeling more motivated themselves...

and I actually bought a former boss a book and sent it to him anonymously about why it was more useful to be loved than feared... he was an asshole and needed it :laugh:
 

Jaguar

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At my Monday morning sales meetings, I used to slide a couple c-notes down the conference table to the person I thought did a great job last week. No one knew when I would do it next, so they all broke their necks trying to be the next "C-note person." Needless to say, sales took an upswing.

Amazing what some people will do for money and a moment in the spotlight. :)
A little competition never hurts.
 

redcheerio

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they do sales in a position where they are left independent of someone looking over thier shoulder all day long, so I always need to come up with ideas to get them feeling more motivated themselves...

Hm, well have a look at the Drive book if you're interested, you might find some useful ideas in there.


and I actually bought a former boss a book and sent it to him anonymously about why it was more useful to be loved than feared... he was an asshole and needed it :laugh:

Oooooh, awesome! What book was it??? Maybe I'll do it too! :nice:

Here's to asshole managers: :threaten:

But if I really want it to be anonymous :ninja:, I prob'ly need to wait awhile before sending it since I just left the company.... :thinking:
 
G

Ginkgo

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At my Monday morning sales meetings, I used to slide a couple c-notes down the conference table to the person I thought did a great job last week. No one knew when I would do it next, so they all broke their necks trying to be the next "C-note person." Needless to say, sales took an upswing.

Amazing what some people will do for money and a moment in the spotlight. :)
A little competition never hurts.

So what? The c-note was a fake placebo pill? Lol.
 

redcheerio

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At my Monday morning sales meetings, I used to slide a couple c-notes down the conference table to the person I thought did a great job last week. No one knew when I would do it next, so they all broke their necks trying to be the next "C-note person." Needless to say, sales took an upswing.

Amazing what some people will do for money and a moment in the spotlight. :)
A little competition never hurts.

So what? The c-note was a fake placebo pill? Lol.

Actually, it sounds like a great idea to me, if done well. You can't argue with success....
 

miss fortune

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I'm not yet at a point in my career to bribe them with nice amounts of cash, but I have pondered bribing with cookies or lunch... both of which are things that my team really, really likes (they could also easily be bribed by beer probably :laugh:)

and I'll have to check the book out... wonder if it's available on kindle? :thinking:

currently I get thier goals for the week on Monday morning and then check in with them every evening to keep tabs on thier mentality and things of that sort... if they hit thier goals I bring it up at the next team meeting and congratulate them and such... just looking for fresh new ideas- and for things involving overall improvement as well as just selling a lot of stuff! :)
 

Jaguar

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Go to the CEO and tell him you want to create some incentives. They work.
It comes out of his pocket, not yours.

First person to write X number of deals gets:

A
B
C
D


This is not a new concept.
Any company that sells anything, provides $$ bonuses for its reps.
It's all based on production.
Daily, weekly, monthly - use your imagination.
 

miss fortune

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Go to the CEO and tell him you want to create some incentives. They work.
It comes out of his pocket, not yours.

First person to write X number of deals gets:

A
B
C
D


This is not a new concept.
Any company that sells anything, provides $$ bonuses for its reps.
It's all based on production.
Daily, weekly, monthly - use your imagination.

we already DO get bonuses for certain sales milestones made each week (and I just earned a nice one on friday :cool:), so that incentive is already there... I should tell them that if they all hit thier goals for a week I'm having them all over and barbecuing some ribs since we're a tight knit group and have talked about doing something of the sort for quite a while and have never gotten around to it :laugh:


yes, they need to compete with each other some more than just accepting the fact that one of them beats the entire office... SOMEONE needs to take him down :yes:
 

Jaguar

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we already DO get bonuses for certain sales milestones made each week (and I just earned a nice one on friday :cool:), so that incentive is already there...

When you used the word "bribe," it made me wonder how your company viewed money. :D
 

redcheerio

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mrcockburn

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Motivation that works (literally)

Paste this on every cubicle:

skeletons.gif


"IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS TO BE YOUR NEXT FAMILY PORTRAIT, GET YOUR ASS BACK TO WORK"
 
T

ThatGirl

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If you continuously have one guy outselling everyone else, perhaps you can level the playing field to a competition and/or reward for the greatest percentage increase from the previous month instead of hitting the largest total number. That way you have everyone starting from ground one, which was last months numbers. You put most of your team instantly back into the game.
 

Southern Kross

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This is an interesting TED lecture on human motivation. Apparently neither the carrot or stick approach work for vaguely complex tasks - it can even make things worse.

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&feature=channel_video_title"]Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation[/YOUTUBE]
 
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