Dear Liz,

I know that leadership is all about trust and I do trust my employees, but I wish they would show a little more effort. They come in on time and they get their work done and that's it.

I leave my office around 6:15 p.m. most nights and I don't think that's an especially long workday. But the parking lot is nearly empty every night when I leave. Why am I always one of the last half-dozen people out the door?

When I started this company six years ago there was a lot more team spirit. Now I have to come up with incentives to get people to put in extra effort.

I haven't threatened anyone or threatened to cut the bottom ten percent of the team or any of that but I did tell my managers that I want them to incorporate not only output but also effort into their performance review rankings.

I want to reward the people who work the hardest here and make it clear that anyone who wants a 'dial-it-in' type job is not a good fit. I don't think a growing, $10M company should be a place where people work from nine to five and then go home. What do you advise?

Thanks,

Victoria

Dear Victoria,

I am sympathetic. I can see that you are in pain, and I can only tell you that nothing you try in an effort to change your culture will work until you own your piece of the puzzle.

You started a company and brought your first teammates into the club when your company was small and nimble.

For people who like a start-up atmosphere - and there are lots of them - that kind of culture is to a certain degree its own reward.

I'm hoping and assuming that you also gave your teammates stock options or another way to share in the wealth as your company grew and prospered.

Now you're frustrated because people don't take their jobs as seriously as you do. Your employees don't feel the same excitement about their work that they used to.

That is a common complaint among entrepreneurs, but let's be logical, Victoria - why should anyone else care about their work as much as you do?

It's your company! You run the show. Your firm is bigger now and your colleagues' jobs aren't as exciting or close to the center of things as they once were.

Who could blame your employees for treating their jobs like ordinary jobs, now that you have let those jobs become ordinary?

The only person who can change the energy in your shop is you. You began your letter to me by saying that you trust your employees, but that is not true and I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I were less than truthful about that.

If you trusted your teammates, you wouldn't ask your managers to evaluate them based on 'effort' (whatever that means).

When you hire people you trust, you can face forward and lead them. When you don't trust the people you hired, then you turn back and manage them into the dust. That's what you are proposing to do now. That's not what true leaders do!

You remember when your company was smaller and there was more team spirit.

Where did that team spirit come from, back then? It came from the connection between you and your vision, your team members' visions for themselves and the fun of creating something new and amazing together, as a team.

You have let that Team Mojo energy flag, and it's your job to build it back up by treating your team members as valued collaborators rather than employees who must perform to your specifications or face consequences.

Who are you inspiring, these days? Who are you inspired by? You have lost the thread and it's your number one job now to get it back.

You want your managers to rank employees based on effort? That's as bad as any weenie management process I've seen. Give people something exciting and mojo-building to do and give them a good reason to do it, and they'll blow your minds every time!

You won't need to impose weenie measurements on them then. The best you can expect by tracking and measuring your employees' work (or their effort!) is grudging compliance. Is that all you want to shoot for?

If my Human Workplace teammates and I came out to meet your team, your employees would tell us (in confidence, of course) that what used to be a fun and fizzy start-up environment is now corporate and buttoned down.

Why should anyone stick around after five p.m. when their CEO is the kind of person who counts cars in the parking lot? That is a fear reaction. We all get fearful at times, and we can surmount that fear as long as tell the truth about it. That's the first step!

Your problem will melt away when you stop pretending that you can control your employees' actions, much less their motivation level, through fear the way you are proposing to do with your goofy A-for-effort performance-review scheme.

If I were you I'd ditch performance reviews altogether along with every other weenified business process you've accumulated since your company's founding. Ask your employees what they want from the company instead of telling them what you want.

I worked for U.S. Robotics from the same point in its trajectory - one hundred employees and $10M in annual revenues - to the 10,000-employee, $3B-sales point and we kept the flame burning and growing throughout that time. That's because our culture was our highest priority.

The great culture produced the steady and rapid growth in sales, profitability and every other good result an organization could ask for. The culture drives the business results -- not the other way around!

This is a personal-growth challenge for you, Victoria, and many other CEOs have faced the same challenge you are facing now.

It's easy to get people excited about a new idea when they are part of the founding team or when they're hired into a fizzy, fun start-up environment.

It's harder to fan the flame when you've got layers of managers and policies gumming up the energy flow. Can you give up some control in order to get the old excitement back?

Can you remember that the Team Mojo in your shop is the only fuel that will get you to your goals, and that no policy, metrics or system will get you there?

It's just the opposite. You have to remove sludge from your business and let the energy flow again.

Your job now is to back up to go forward. I promise you that when you do, you'll be very happy with the results and your teammates and customers will, also.

All the best,

Liz

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