There is lots of conversation among us lean coaches about motivation and inspiration related to people changing. The difference to focus on is where the source is that compels you to action: internally with the case of inspiration and externally in motivation.
Lean requires leadership; a top down approach because people do what their boss needs. People generally work on what they think their boss thinks is important. One for motivation theory.

On the contrary, it is widely known that we really foul things up when we reward people for things that they should be doing anyway. Dan Pink talks on this concisely in his TED presentation and in his new book DRiVE. So, people are inspired.
The conversation could go on and on. Jeff Liker presents 5 motivational theories in The Toyota Way and how Toyota uses all of the above given different circumstances. I bet a blend is appropriate. We need leadership being sincere and learning with the team. And we need people ready to do the right thing.

So, what's keeping the team that you are on from changing?

Thanks to some local friends in the A/E/C industry I'm getting through Steven Spear's new book on organizational design, Chasing the Rabbit. We came up on a powerful remark about learning that I want to share. It is about responsibility and doing your homework to make yourself ready for external help.
Page 259: [The success of improvement] "rests on your willingness, energy, and drive to do your own homework so that you are pushed to the edge of your abilities and are therefore receptive and positioned to benefit from feedback, critique, and coaching."

What I hear on projects is, "we need to get our own house in order before asking others to change."

 

Construction, like healthcare, is learning from another industry. I was just watching David Fillingham, Chief Executive, Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Trust give his speech on Managing the Lean Hospital: what it takes to engage the whole hospital for the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit 2009. In this he has four points on how to convert the skeptics that I thought fit very nicely to our industry (construction):

• Rigorous use of lean methods
• Convincing data
• Hands on experience
• Reinforce through changed management system and leadership style.

So, in my own words this means that we need to:

• Adopt some tools and not to deviate from them. Make a concerted effort to use the Last Planner® System, A3 Learning, and a Visual Management System like Toyota's Safety-Quality-Deliverable-Cost-Morale work cell management boards.
• Find success stories and share them. Celebrate and publish all the wins. Go to www.leanconstruction.org and share a new presentation with your team once per week. 
• Get into action early and reflect on the learning. Experiment! When is it the right time to change anyway?
• And finally, change at the top. Leadership needs to be fully engaged. The Project Executive needs to be very well versed in Standard Work and all the tools that are being adopted so that they can coach the practice.

Something to think about over the Holidays for that New Year's resolution...

"...Accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Yes, this is a quote from the Declaration of Independence.  Using this quote to offer some commentary on the state of the AEC industry would have probably been more appropriate near Independence Day but when a good thought strikes, why wait?  I like this quote because it so eloquently describes how we are more likely to go with the flow no matter how frustrating that practice can be. 

Status isn't well known or discussed, yet it affects motivation and is a part of every leaders job. Strategy-Business.com's recent article, Managing with the Brain in Mind outlines what a leader can do to help their people create an environment to support motivation. The article covers what happens with our brains when we experience unpleasant things in the workplace. Not safety like OSHA, but mentally safety like not hostile. The article deals with everyday things, like when someone offers advice. When they do that they may be inadvertently saying they are superior to you and diminish your status. Uncertainty is another everyday thing we deal with. Some uncertainty is good; no one likes a micromanager. Too much can be very uncomfortable and make it nearly impossible to get stuff done.

The general result when we are threatened is that we, to say the least, loose our edge. We go from serene and concentrated to stubbornly focused on the threat.

Go to the article for a detailed description of each of the 5 things that a leader can do to help create a safe environment that motivates: one that promotes status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

As I'm writing this I'm sitting on an airplane flying to a client site. Earlier a flight attendant announced to the passengers that all electronic devices must be put away during takeoff. As the plane lifted off the ground it occurred to me that nobody ever tells the passengers why the electronics must be stowed, or for that matter why we must keep the tray table up and the seat upright.  There is only the mention that passengers must comply with crew member instructions as a matter of federal law.

I would find it refreshing if the flight attendants stated why these actions are requested. I think passengers would respond positively. If we are told what to do, we feel powerless and defensive. If something is requested of us, we feel powerful and if this request is explicit it gives us a motivation to act responsibly.  Flight attendants might even get some help from their passengers in making an airplane cabin a safer environment.

motivation |ˌmōtəˈvā sh ən| - The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.

 

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən| - The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative.

So, a couple of months back I was reviewing Quick n’ Easy Kaizens with a small group of three accountants. Something pretty cool happened. The situation started with one of the accountants sharing her QnEK of posting the 5 most commonly used expense codes right on her cubicle wall. People were constantly coming up to her to ask her for them – interrupting her work or causing them to wait if she was on the phone or away from her desk. Now when they came to her desk, regardless of what she was doing, they could see the 5 codes right there in front of them.

The interesting thing to me is that it wasn’t till she shared her improvement with the others that they even realized this situation had any opportunity for improvement. It was something that neither of the others had ever given any thought to. The group talked about her improvement and discussed other improvements they could make to the situation. One of the others suggested emailing those 5 common codes around to everyone that used them. They talked about that idea for a while and continued building off of each other. After a few minutes of discussion, the third person in the group very excitedly shared that they could put those codes right on the expense reports. This would completely eliminate the need for anyone to look up the codes because they are right there, where the work happens.

This situation represents one of the hidden beauties of a good QnEK program. When people get in the mood of improving together, their ideas bounce off each other and grow from each other. They actually inspire and drive each other to continue stretching their minds for even better improvements. If these three people didn’t communicate about the situation and the improvements, minimal improvements would have been made. Through collaboration, this team found a way to reduce the defects in the incorrect processing in these reports for themselves, and they also found ways to eliminate unnecessary movement and reduce waiting for many others.

When you get angry when someone screws up or when you use anger to motivate, it causes fear in the person you are working with. This eliminates any sense of experimentation because the person doesn't want to repeat screwing up because of the horrible results. They are reduced to doing what they are told. Learning stops. Improvements discontinue.

Anger is one of those interesting things that we can't use for good reasons very often. Anger is difficult to contain. If you get angry about something, people will remember it. They'll assume that you can be set off for a variety of reasons and will stop sharing information with you, again out of fear. 

Please don't spread this culture of being angry when someone screws up. Instead learn from failure. You must view failure in terms of what has been learned. Evaluate people on their resilience and the ability to define and solve problems, while also functioning as a team player.