Following on from our debate last time, I am almost certain that regarding the Motivational profile of the Royal Mail, we would find the following: the staff would predominantly have Relationship motivators. Time for them is slower and change is largely to be avoided, since they want certainty. Since the staff make up the bulk of the Royal Mail, it follows that screening the whole organisation would produce the same result: the dominant motivator is relationship based.
The senior executives, on the other hand, are Achievement motivator based. For them time is faster, and outcomes, not relationships, are what is important. One important outcome will, therefore, be cost cutting, efficiency, savings.
Beyond the senior executives will be the consultants advising them – often in fact Professor X and a team from a leading Business School. These will tend to be Growth orientated: faster still than the Achievement motivated, and concerned with growth – not the same as the tangible outcomes of the cost-cutters. One slightly over-simplified way of expressing this might be: the Achievers will tend to want efficiencies, whereas the Growth motivators will move towards effectiveness. Both are necessary, but like centripetal and centrifugal force they go in opposite directions.
What this all means – surprise, surprise – is that all three groups are really speaking a different language and coming from a different ‘space’. This space isn’t inconsequential – it is the energy space that we describe through our motivators; for that is what motivation is – an energy. Thus, it is so difficult to deal with people whose energies are running counter to ours – the difficulty is way beyond mere intellectual dissent.
What the Maps could do is:
a. provide that language that would make sense of some of their dialogues
b. suggest appropriate reward strategies that would work, that would touch the ‘hot buttons’ of the other side
In this way the Maps could help redefine the conflict.
Of course what this is in essence is a change management programme, but one that cuts to the chase: the motivational profiles are where our energies go – they therefore go straight to the heart of what we want! And when people offer us what we want, we tend to be more compliant.
If the management of the Royal Mail understood what people wanted at a motivational level, and started using the language and reward strategies accordingly, how differently might this conflict turn out?
James
The Mapping Motivation Series 