How To Instill Urgency In Your Team
Intrinsic motivation and empowerment win against monetary incentives every single time. Adopt the Empowerment Handshake — a simple “way of working” agreement that creates empowered teams.
A core job for leaders is motivating their teams to deliver high-quality work quickly. Many executives I coach are frustrated that their teams do not move with a sense of urgency. They feel that product features take too long to ship, deals take too long to close, or marketing campaigns take too long to measure. What creates speed and quality and how can you drive lasting change at scale?
Where “Carrot and Stick” often falls short
One of my favorite classes at Harvard Business School was MOMV — Managing Output, Motivations, and Value (or something like it). Students are presented with real-life cases where executives try different methods to increase the quality or speed of their team. We then discuss what was tried, why it did or did not work, and what we would try instead. (For those wondering how I became a full-time executive coach, this was probably an early sign).
Many of my classmates suggested tactics that rely on extrinsic motivation: monetary incentives, competition through scarcity, or a healthy dose of fear and authority. In many of these cases, either the incentives did not create real change, or the change was temporary, lasting only until the team adapted to the “additional incentive” as a new normal.
What’s worse, extrinsic incentives can have the opposite effect than what it was designed to promote.
Daycares that put a price on being late to pick-up time — $15 per minute — found that parents were more frequently late to pick up.
Compared with those who are never given rewards, kids who are given a reward for doing a task are less likely to continue to task when the reward is taken away.
Car mechanics who are given cars-fixed bonuses will decrease their output to where the bonus-to-effort ratio is more optimal. The quality of the fixes decreases, and difficult cases are heavily delayed as workers select for quick fixes.
Why? Ill-placed extrinsic motivation replaces intrinsic motivation. A parent who values being on time can now assign a dollar value to the delay. Car mechanics who find it fulfilling to solve an issue now assign a bonus amount to each fix. A company or leader can only provide so much extrinsic motivation — it is time-consuming, ripe for gaming, and often very expensive.
A case for intrinsic motivation
Rather than focusing on extrinsic motivation, leaders who want more motivated teams should invest in intrinsic motivators. They are less “visible” and take a bit longer to implement, but in the long term, create real lasting change.
Intrinsic motivators rely on the premise that most people are wired to seek growth and fulfillment. We seek self-improvement, enjoy being good at what we do, and want meaningful work. The leader’s job is to create an environment that nurtures each person’s innate desire for mastery and fulfillment.
They are not “working for someone else” or “collecting a paycheck”. Instead, they are solving problems that they believe are important to solve for others. They are learning to skills that they want to learn. They are focused on the tasks that bring them energy.
In this mode, the team adopts a virtuous cycle of growth and success. Being the closest to the day-to-day work, they are motivated to solve problems that slow them down. When empowered to try their ideas, they are more likely to persist and try different approaches until they succeed. Finally, the more a team practices problem-solving or opportunity identification, the better they will become at looking around the corner, spotting high-impact opportunities, and delivering impactful work faster.
Yue’s Coaching Corner
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The Empowerment Handshake (TM)
How do you tactically increase intrinsic motivation on a team? The simplest way is to look for opportunities to better align what a strong performer enjoys doing and does well, with what the business needs. Then get out of the way.
For larger teams and organizations, a broader cultural and process change is necessary. Leaders should consider adopting the Empowerment Handshake — a simple “way of working” agreement that lays out how the team and leader can work effectively together to increase intrinsic motivation. This process is frequently used at OpenAI, Meta, Google, and more.
For the team:
There are clear areas of ownership for each individual. Larger projects are split into easy-to-understand ways and with minimal dependencies. There is room to run without stepping on toes.
Teams have control over how they work. They set their own goals with input from others. They can try and adopt new ways of working that are more effective.
They drive progress, resolve blockers, and communicate effectively. They are accountable for identifying problems and proposing solutions. They set their own priorities based on goals. They proactively communicate progress and updates to critical stakeholders.
For the leader:
Leaders focus on the direction and the vision, not the how. They set ambitious goals and lay out clear narratives for business impact. Their job is to highlight boundaries and create direction so that everyone is working towards a shared vision and goals.
Leaders bring context to their teams. Their seniority means they will learn new information faster and broader than their team. And it is their job to share that context with the team to inform their work and decisions.
Leaders support their teams in problem-solving, but do not jump in to “do it for them”. With more experience and context, leaders may have alternative ideas or approaches for the team to consider. But the final approach to try remains (as often as possible), up to the team.
Leaders encourage escalations. At times, cross-functional challenges require a certain level of authority to resolve. Teams escalate the issue and potential options, and leaders chase down a resolution.
In this environment, the team gains mastery of the “how”. The leader, in getting out of the “How”, gains mastery in setting strategy and direction. Together, they will deliver higher-impact work faster.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
These are really great tips and it’s such an obvious solution. But so hard to slow down and implement these things. Because there are other hidden urgencies that the team deals with on a day to day that slows progress. But I am going to think about how we can make time to implement these solutions.