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Lead the Change from the Inside Out: Principles and Practice of Motivation
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LEAD THE CHANGE FROM THE INSIDE OUT: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF MOTIVATION
by Faiez H. Seyal Managing Director ACE Development Dimensions
INTRODUCTION A large company had been continuously losing its market share since 1994. With the ever-increasing cost of operations coupled with poor customer service and vendors/dealers relations, added with lost employees integrity, losses were at an all-time high in 1998. Corporate culture included all the deadly evils like aristocracy, power games, favoritism, poor communication with employees and other stake holders, slow decisionmaking, poor employee-management relationships, late comings, no accountability, blaming and complaining attitude, resulting in inter-personal conflicts, lost motivation, aggression, disrespect, etc. Mal practices including stealing, and kickbacks, in all the departments was the order of the day. In such an environment, after the failures of two regional directors, the third newly appointed regional director (RD) was confronted with a big challenge of motivating and persuading the orthodox and conservative countrys senior management team to turn the company around. All the efforts made by his predecessors by introducing various minor and major change initiatives were either put in the cold storage or never got implemented due to the extreme resistance and non-willingness of the senior management team of nine (9), including GMs, Director and MD. This team of nine (9) very intelligently had been justifying their poor performance by putting all the blames on the national tax system, national price controls, holding company policies, expensive raw materials, etc. The new RD within the first three months of his appointment sensed the situation and concluded that he would not be able to handle it at his own and must involve a third-party to assist him. Within a month, he appointed me to assist him with a mandate to design and implement an 18-month long human resource development (HRD) effort with the direct reporting relationship with him. Learning from the past experiences, it was agreed that even though the purpose of the project was to initiate a major cultural change, it must be camouflaged under the umbrella of an HRD effort to which the local management team seemed more receptive. Over the next 18 months, hundreds of activities were performed including a behavioral retreat session, vision formulation workshop, skills building workshop, leadership session, hundreds of brainstorming and coaching sessions, meetings, etc. This "so-called" HRD program became so powerful that it ignited a never-ending process of chain events that
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lead a major cultural change in the company, producing tremendous business results. The RD and the senior management team while appreciating the whole effort in terms of quality of various programs, project management, well-planned and thoughtful activities and sincerity, commitment and competence of the consultant credited one activity without which they thought this success could never have been achieved and that was the initial 30-hour retreat session. This session used a unique mix of behavioral and mind sciences, medicine, spiritualism and religion. This paper is meant to share the overall experience of this effort while focusing on this single activity that was called a miracle.
The detailed analysis of this initial data forced me to the next phase (that was not originally planned) and that was of conducting meetings with the HR, the scanning of personnel files and then having another round of personal meetings with key managers. This revealed the following facts:
Average per capita medical expenses had increased by three folds sine 1994 Absenteeism and sick leave reporting increased to double Out of a total group of about 20 senior managers, 13 have cardiac disease history General unhappiness with their marriages Four reported divorces, two second marriage cases, six separated 90 percent reported three or more arguments/fights per week with their spouses 74 percent reported three or more arguments per week with their grown-up children 80 percent reported that they had gained 20 pounds or more weight in past 5 years 60 percent reported the regular usage of anti-depressant drugs 55 percent admitted the regular use of abusive language either at work or at home 85 percent reported 8 hours or more sleep daily and that their sleep has increased in the past five years 70 percent complained about lack of energy and motivation to do anything 70 percent reported that someone in the family (father, mother, children) falls sick twice or more times a month Out of the total 10 whose children were married, seven expressed their and their childrens unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their marriages 90 percent reported that they are generally not happy with the life as a whole. All of these people had a big negative metaphor to describe the life About 40 percent reported a major personal financial loss in the past three years 30 percent reported a sudden death or a tragedy in the immediate family in the past three years
One might think what this personal information had to do with the project objectives? You will know that later. At that time, the biggest challenge ahead however, was of motivating this team of highly unhappy and critical people who were already pre-occupied with their personal problems.
Figure 1
Events over Time Perception Conclusions
Beliefs
Expectations
Assumptions
Values
Attitude
Behavior
Life Change
I was clear that without a positive change in beliefs, no permanent change in attitude and behaviors could be achieved. The task was clear. However the real challenge was of the motivation of the team. During the diagnostic, it was communicated that a number of initiatives/activities were undertaken in the past to develop a positive culture, but all of these failed to achieve the desired objectives. Various activities that were performed in the past three years included: Office infrastructure, facilities improvement (quality of life) Salary increase Pay for performance and other reward system Better cafeteria and health services New and better cars Job rotation system Job redesign to create additional challenges in the work Departmental meetings/brain-storming sessions etc. to enhance employees involvement and participation Organized seven training workshops with built-in travel and fun Appreciation and recognizing long-service In-company events, functions, family get-togethers, etc.
A lot was done to increase the motivation level of the team but unfortunately it did not work. Why it did not work, my analysis to that was something like this.
We have a body, we have a mind, we have a heart and we have a soul. It means that we have physical needs, we have intellectual needs, we have emotional needs and we have spiritual needs. The truth of the life is that we can never reach our full potential and be at peace unless all of our four dimensions are in harmony to each other.
Soul (Spiritual Needs) Heart: (Emotional Needs) Mind: (Intellectual Needs) Body: (Physical Needs)
Figure 2: Hierarchy of Needs Let me make it easy by providing a layman example. Unless our physical needs are met, we would never want to strive for or cater to our intellectual needs. The moment we have met a few of our intellectual needs, immediately after our emotional needs become active. A need to be loved and to love, a need to be with someone to share our lives, a need to be heard and a need to be respected, appreciated and recognized for our work, etc. When after having all of these three needs fulfilled, life seems to be empty, then we start pondering as to what is missing. A fortunate few, very soon and a majority of people, at very late in their lives, discover that one of the important dimensions of us has been neglected and that is our soul. Most of them would try to do as much as they could, to address their spiritual needs, but most of the time the earlier negligence would have damaged our souls which in return would have damaged our other three dimensions to the extent that nothing much could be done at that point in time, to recover from the earlier damages. The point here is that it is the bitter truth of life if you may call it so, but an unchallenged law of nature that we could never be at our best by ignoring any one side of us. Whatever positive or negative happens to any one of these dimensions, it in results affects other three, positively or negatively, respectively. One could even relate Maslows hierarchy of needs with this law of nature and would find a number of similarities. A few minor differences that one might observe would be due to difference in Maslows own educational, cultural, social and religious background. The dilemma in this particular case, as obvious, was that the company had been investing considerably to motivate its people by addressing their physical, intellectual and emotional needs. But because the high-level spiritual needs were un-addressed, the company could not achieve the desired objectives from previous initiatives and training programs. To reinforce my hypothesis, when I sought help from various religious resources including Quran, I was overwhelmed with the Quranic teachings that supported my hypothesis. A few verses are quoted here:
Evil as an example are people who reject Our signs and wrong their own souls. (7: 177) Because God will never change the grace which He hath bestowed on a people until they change what is in their (own) souls. (8: 53) ..It is not God Who wrongs them, but they wrong their own souls. (9: 70) . Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (with their own souls).. (13: 11) And if any strive (with might and main), they do so for their own souls.. (29: 6) And be ye not like those who forgot God; and He made them forget their own souls! Such are the rebellious transgressors! (59: 19)
tiers of management, teamwork, also increased. The HR managers were trained in behavioral sciences and were given responsibility to organize various behavioral training sessions for the emotional uplift of their people. The annual confidential reports of the last era were replaced with performance reviews and subsequently with performance management systems. By the end of the era, the management development term was replaced with the people development. The scope of development broadened and included the personal development aspect in addition to professional development. From 90s onwards: This is the fourth era. People were finally declared as human capital. It was realized that the only difference between winning and losing organizations is the quality of its people including their character, beliefs, habits, personal motivation, abilities, etc. People were realized as spiritual beings with various spiritual needs and wanting to experience spiritual growth. Authors who published in the last era but people never understood them became popular and best sellers. A typical example is of Stephen Coveys Seven Habits of Highly Successful People that included spiritualism and addressed centuries-old laws of nature now forgotten by our material society. The popularity of the book reinforced the fact that how unknown the universal truths are and how desperate the world is to have solutions to their problems. The emphasis of developing good mangers and workers changed to making people good people first. If we could just make them good human beings, they would automatically become good managers, workers, etc. The emphasis started shifting from the personality traits to the character traits. A simple life truth re-emerged and i.e. how could we have ethical organizations without having ethical people in it. It was also realized that personality traits could easily be taught to anyone but it is extremely difficult to infuse character traits in to people and that is a prophetic work. By the end of the century, the emphasis started shifting from spiritualism to God. By the turn of the century, God finally regains entry in the modern worlds corporate life and is being recognized as a part and parcel of our everyday s life. The HR managers are expected to be mentors, spiritual leaders, healers, etc. Isnt it amazing? It will be for those who are far away from Quran but not for those who are called men of understanding in Quran. The point here is no matter if we realize it or not, it is already happening. And something that has not happened yet, would definitely happen, because if it is in Quran, you can rest assured that it is an unchallenged truth. The more we explore and learn, more aware of the fact we become. The truth that we cannot go beyond what is already there in the Quran.
Need to know the life principles and truths, and how do they affect me as an individual and the work to be aligned with those universal principles Opportunities to meditate and reflect on experiences Appreciation for my religious beliefs and the work and the culture where I could practice my religious beliefs Something that will also enhance the quality of my personal life including my relationship with self, my children, my spouse and the society as a whole A culture and opportunities to talk about and seek Gods guidance
Based on my observations about the attitude and behavior of the team as well as the suffering they were going through in their lives, I thought it to be absolutely critical. I was also certain that unless we filled up the emptiness in their lives with something powerful and built them spiritually, it would be foolish to expect that they would be motivated enough to contribute positively in the work ahead. How could one fix someone elses life if ones own life is shattered. We knew that the normal human response is always, whats in it for me? And that was something I wanted to capitalize on. Hence, I blended the answer to this question in the overall program and the methodology. The objectives set for the behavioral retreat session as finalized with RD were: 1. 2. 3. 4. to sell the idea of change, by providing them a totally new perspective of change persuade and motivate the team to change from within so that the team wants to change as opposed to being forced to change provide people a more positive attitude towards life provide opportunities to individuals to look deep inside, to reflect on their practices, behaviors and performance and identify those practices and behaviors that needs to be changed to achieve the objective of the overall project
The contents of the program included: The need for Change: what happens to us if we do not change? Universal law of change and its implications on individuals Where does the self fit into organizational and societal change The cost of negative thinking What is positive attitude and the benefits of being positive Accepting responsibility of personal and professional life Learning and change and the universal law endorsing this Traits of global successful people Values that build high performance culture Religious interpretations of these values What do we get as a reward if we followed these values Importance of self discovery and self meditation Stress where does it come, what does it cost and how to control it Our personal character and what it has to do with the performance The price we pay if we choose to do things at the cost of our character Ethics of change and why and how to follow those Winning support of the family and building highly supportive family
With this agenda, I decided to persuade the RD to allow spouse participation in the program. My stance on this issue was something like this. People are emotional beings.
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They need to be told and their new learning needs to be reinforced. They need to have someone around with whom they could share and who could also provide them with the support and encouragement. The implementation of the learning would become much easier if the spouses were included to support their partner on this journey to change. I also persuaded the RD that we must enhance the quality of life at their homes, if we have to achieve the objective of enhancing the quality of life at the workplace. And very promptly, he got convinced. The response of the senior management team was totally different than what I thought. I was thinking that they would like the idea of bringing their spouses with them on a four-day vacation cum training trip to one of the resorts. To my surprise, many rejected the idea. The struggle I went through to persuade them to bring their spouses along on this company-paid "trip" was an experience in itself. However cutting it short, with the exception of a few, all others agreed. During the orientation session on the first day of training, when I announced that the training would last for about 10 hours a day, the team openly confronted the very idea of such a long session. The training thus started in a little tense environment, but by the end of the day the whole scenario was changed and the group became interested and started opening up. Many of their beliefs about various aspects of their lives were shattered. By the end of the lunch time on the second day, requests for one-to-one session (individual and/or couple counseling) after the formal training hours session started coming. Responding to the need, I agreed to entertain these requests after the formal training hours and it lasted till mid-night on the following two nights. On the third day the last session was reserved for the personal action plan (PAP) activity, i.e. what do we do differently in the office. After the activity, the group commitment on the PAP was taken and endorsed by their spouses. By the end of the third day, almost everyone had confessed their negative behaviors, mal-practices, wrong beliefs, and showed their personal commitment to change. Amid cries, tears, commitments, promises and hopes, the session concluded on the third day and by that time we had spent more than 35 hours together in the training room compared with originally planned 30 hours. Throughout the training, the whole team was so involved that none missed any sessions that lasted for about 14 hours a day for whole three days. Suffice it to say the training not only met but also exceeded the objective. Many couples reported that if they had done this training earlier, their lives would have been totally different, today.
AFTER-SESSION ACTIVITIES
This was a beginning and of course, a very powerful one. We had won the trust and commitment of the team to turn the company around. This was the time to accelerate the process before the motivation and energy level fizzled. To this end, we immediately planned the whole project and formed a steering committee of 3 senior managers from within the group to monitor the progress and drive the major up-coming change. The cultural change model we used is listed in the Figure 3. Major activities after the first session included: two-days (20-hours) residential vision formulation workshop for senior managers. Two task teams of 6 members each, were formulated after this workshop. One responsible for drafting the strategic documents and the other to
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submit the report on the cultural barriers in the way to achieve the vision and propose recommendations for removing them two-days (20-hour) residential session on leading and facilitating teams was conducted for the members of task team focusing on team skills and group dynamics one-day motivational session was conducted for everyone in the company. This session was the compressed version of the three-day behavioral retreat session. The purpose of the session was to overcome the chances of any potential resistance during the implementation phase and to minimize any chances of grapevines by selling the idea of change, telling people what is coming next, why are we doing it and what are we expecting from them. Two task teams met on a weekly basis after office-hours to review their performance against targets. In addition, the team allocated three hours twice a week to undertake other sub-activities, necessary to reach the objectives. These sessions were initially monitored by us. Both teams met the dead line of presenting their draft recommendations within three months.
Vision
Where do we Want to be?
Values
What do we care about?
Strategy
How will we get there?
Behavior
How do we work together?
Objectives
What do we Need to do?
Actions and Results Figure 3: Model of Cultural Change After the approval/revision of the recommendations by the steering committee, the team developed the implementation plan under our guidance. The progress was monthly shared with the steering committee After the approval of the recommendations and the implementation plan, a fiveday (60-hour) residential Leadership training was conducted for a group of 50 to assist them with the implementation. This session addressed leadership behaviors and skills
THE RESULTS
Surprisingly, all recommendations were thoroughly implemented by the end of the 15th month without any resistance. The tangible results achieved as a result of this effort are miraculous:
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Product quality improved- customer complaints came down to one-third within the first three months of the implementation Continuous improvement philosophy embedded A major cultural change achieved Right-sizing achieved without any major resistance Sales increased Reduced wastage/repeat work Reduced overtime Increased productivity/efficiency leading to lesser sub-contracting Absenteeism reduced Reduced medical costs Customer satisfaction index improved Teamwork induced Reduced employee turnover Reduced management-workers tensions Interpersonal conflicts eliminated Abuse and aggression eliminated Sales travel billing reduced Store stealing eliminated Kick-backs eliminated as reported by vendors Plant/office cleanliness Motivation and morale improved Customers/vendors wait time decreased to one-third Spouse relationships improved tremendously as reported by spouses in a followup session
Is it not miraculous? Yes, it is. All of this might be sounding out of this world. You must be thinking what sort of magic was this? Well, it was the magic of the truth. Truth is powerful. And if one has the courage, passion and commitment strong enough, anyone could do this magic.
CONCLUSION
This paper has listed my experience of a miraculously successful HRD project. My client and I both agreed that these marvellous results could never have been achieved without bringing spiritualism and God in the work. It might make a lot of sense to many but there will be many others who will still not like to accept these basic truths of life. I always tell people that no matter what we like or what our individual biases towards life may be, the fact is that the truth does and will prevail. We must understand that we are not independent. We are a part of a universal system created by God and there are prescribed and set rules and guidelines called laws of nature to run this universe. We are not powerful enough to change these rules. However, our Creator has given us a choice either to conform to these laws of nature or discard them. If we choose not to conform by the prescribed laws, which most of us do, then on one hand we will never reach our full potential and on the other, we will pay the fine for our non-conformances. The fine can be anything (e.g. the sufferings individuals were going through, as listed in the earlier part of this paper). Therefore, its a matter of choice. It is not only me. Everyday, people around the world in their chosen fields are revealing the basic truths of life and learning from those. An
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article published in Business Week of August 30, 1999, under the heading 21 Ideas for the 21st century, highlighted the importance of religion in our lives: Why are we here? What does it all mean? Human being will ask these big questions and the religion will provide the context. Neither economic efficiency nor scientific rationalism has diluted the overwhelming force of religious beliefs, rituals, and myths. The pull of religion will intensify. Science and religion will find common grounds. Today, faith .. fills a void that material comfort cannot. In the U.S., 9 in 10 people claim to engage regularly in prayer and 3 out of 4 do so on a daily basis. The narrow-bore scientific disciplines of the late 20th century will give way to interdisciplinary approaches asking the larger, over-reaching questions about the complex patterns of life. The correlation between brainwave patterns and meditative states, faith, prayer and healing will emerge.
And soon after another study revealed the changes in the corporate America in Business Week of November 08, 1999, under the heading Religion in the Workplace: There are 10,000 Bible and prayer groups in workplace in the U.S. (which are retraining corporate America on the powers of the religion, character and morality, etc.) Companies like Xerox, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Wal-Mart Stores regularly organize sessions for the spiritual uplift of their employees 48 % of American talk about religion in their workplaces everyday 51% of American wants to pray everyday Many CEOs regularly consult various spiritual leaders seeking help with important decisions 78 % feel the need of spiritual growth in their life as compared with 20 % in 1994 95 % of American have absolute trust on God Once words like virtue, spirit, and ethics got through the corporate door, God wasnt far behind. Body, emotion and brain. The only thing that was missing from the equation was spirit. and its finally here.
Whatever the non-Muslim world is discovering today must not be new to those who understand Quranic teaching which revealed these basic realities 1400 years ago. Just imagine, that all the hardships and struggle made to reveal these truths and the fine that the world must have paid during the process and finally revealing what was already there could have been avoided if the laws of Quran would have been blindly pursued. Remember that the Quran was called the FINAL book as it lists down the final guidelines for everything. We cannot discover anything, new or different than what is already there. It is simply not possible. If it was possible then the Quran would not have been called the Final book. Well, it seems that even the credit of introducing God in the corporate world would go to Americans. And learning from Americans and following them, like always, by the time, we finally catch up, they will have established yet another benchmark for the world and that would be no different than Quran no matter what they will call it. I leave you with a question
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to ponder over. Is our aloofness to our religion mainly due to those who misused the religion to serve their own vested interests or it is due to our own ignorance as to what exactly it is? And if you too feel the pain and a need for change, then Lets re-build our homes and workplaces on the solid principles of Quran.
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