Give them TEN things and ask for the MOON!
By: Sid Mohasseb
Tags: Business Strategy, Change Management, Entrepreneurship, Human Resources, Management And Leadership

Ask for the moon

A version of this article first appeared on Forbes.com

Entrepreneurship is a team sport that requires active participants at every level. People with their ever-changing desires, expectations, needs and emotions are at the center of life and commerce. Unless you produce your product by yourself, market it to yourself, and buy it to solve a problem that only you have, you need others’ participation.

Business is the byproduct of the exchange between people and companies. Every business needs customers who receive value and pay for it, investors who help finance the growth and employees who innovate and execute. Without customers and funding, business survival is questionable; without employees, innovation and value delivery are compromised.

1. Compensation

Employees exchange their time for a paycheck, the promise of a bonus or a piece of the action in the form of equity options. If you miss the mark on this dimension, you will either face high attrition (a constant churn, driven by monetary needs for survival) or risk being bloated on the cost side and lose competitiveness. Research has shown that compensation is paramount to job satisfaction and productivity. However, it is not a key driver of innovation or contribution.

2. Recognition

Be sure to give credit where credit is due, because only winners win. In 2016, Gallup research found that only 1 in 3 employees felt their efforts are recognized. Help employees stay winners by recognizing their accomplishments accordingly. Over-recognize or misrecognize, and you will diminish the value of recognition. The 12th-place finisher on a junior baseball team getting a trophy for showing up or for effort does not motivate the top performers or establish a winning attitude.

3. Personal Growth

Mental stagnation is the enemy of creativity. Personal growth is not only an essential individual need but also a critical stimulus for organizational achievement. People who desire to improve and aim to personally grow generate energy that fuels progress. They create a wave that can lift the boat for everyone in the organization. Impede your employees’ personal growth, and you are messaging that sameness and stagnation are acceptable in your organization.

4. Challenge

A productive challenge is one that stimulates the mind to solve a problem, experiment and accomplish. It triggers a sense of ownership. People who are not challenged to break personal barriers cannot help the organization evolve.

5. Convenience

By nature, healthy people look for convenience — a way to accomplish without unnecessary efforts. Make life inconvenient for people with unnecessary meetings, rules and regulations, and they will look to avoid participation. Make it convenient for them to show up, participate, contribute, fail and win, and you remove the mental resistance to engage.

6. Security

A sense of security is the foundation for long-term thinking. People who feel secure at work think, plan and innovate for a longer horizon. A Ball State University study found that a lack of job security can make an organization and its workers sick and dysfunctional at multiple levels. Acknowledge that even if positions may not be secure, as long as the company evolves and employees are willing to evolve with it, they are secure. Let them feel secure in experimentation and failure, but insecure about stagnation and losing market relevance. Job security is not about creating an overburdened and unresponsive organization. It is about building an organization that always maintains a path forward for its employees.

7. Fun

Joy, happiness and fun are major contributors to productivity. Employees who have fun at work make work fun with a cycle of joy that leads to a desire to participate and a sense of belonging. Having fun at work is not about having Friday BBQs or ping-pong tables strategically placed between conference rooms. It is a mindset. Studies among different generations of academicians show that “when put in a good mood or in a fun workplace environment, employees are more likely to engage in altruistic and helping behaviors, as they personally benefit from prolonging the good mood.” Let them make it fun, but be wary of faking fun.

8. Confidence

Confidence and courage go hand in hand. Employees who are confident have the courage to face the uncertainty of change and competition. They have the courage to experiment and to face problems and the confidence to plan, execute and pivot. Let them be confident. Help them become more confident by enhancing their competence because confidence breeds confidence and competent employees shape a resilient, courageous and capable organization.

9. Harmony

“Work-life balance” is a buzzword that points to an inherent human need: harmony. Life harmony is essential to clarity of thought. Harmony does not reflect an equalized approach to time management that evenly balances work and life. It is a recognition that work is also a part of life, and work and life are less like independent and separate solid states of being and more like rivers that are always flowing and blending. When people feel harmony, they are not conflicted about choosing life versus work and are motivated to transition with grace between seemingly opposing priorities.

10. Meaning

Finally, give people a cause and a purpose for showing up to work because it directly boosts the bottom line and enhances competitiveness. Provide employees with a meaningful job and a meaningful culture, a meaningful organization that resonates with their personal beliefs and priorities. An organization that fails to provide its people with a purpose remains vulnerable.

Satisfaction is individualized and never exactly the same for two people. But give people these things in the right dosage based on who they are and watch them unleash their powers of creativity and productivity. Give them these 10 things, and you can ask them for the moon.