Group Motivation: As Strong As the Weakest Link

 

According to an allegory that I heard long time back, a council of human organs was once called to select the most important one amongst them as their leader. Naturally, participants started to jockey to become the leader of the council and get to the powerful and important position. So they began making their case.

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Brain said that it needs to be the leader because it directs all thoughts and activities of the human being. Spinal cord said that without its infrastructural support the human body can not stand and function, so it should become the leader. Thyroid gland said the leadership belongs to it because it regulates the body in terms of utilization of food and energy and without it the body would become dysfunctional. And so it went on. Finally it was time for colon to speak, but every one just laughed at it, dismissing the claim for leadership coming from apparently such a lowly organ dealing in feces. This demoralized the colon and it sulked. It became so depressed that after few days it just could not function and soon nothing was excreted from the body.

Well, you can imagine the condition of that poor human being, owner of that colon. Could this person play favoritism and ignore the colon just because it deals in activities deemed to be unglamorous?

I remembered this story while listening to the president of a software engineering company mention how challenging he finds recruiting and motivating many of his employees to do many not-so-glamorous IT development activities. Actually, his question was about how to develop a compensation package for such resources. He was also trying to find out how to balance the risk-reward compensation packages for sales people and IT folks--another contentious issue for many tech people.

The moral of the above allegory is that it takes everyone to make the world--or the human body--something that we forget at times. There are countless IT project teams where the testers, technical writers and trainers feel like second class citizens. That is why this story is so relevant to even an IT project manager running a team comprising many individuals with various expertise, experience and functional responsibilities.

Star Struck…or Struck By Star

Professional sports teams are driven by star power. They routinely seek and acquire one or two marquee players--the ones who are very good at what they do--and then surround these players with others who command less money. The difference between the highest salary and the lowest salary could be tens of millions of dollars.

Arguably, this approach works. Several such teams are winning or are staying profitable. One of the reasons this works is the contract that a player signs with a team, which fixes the salary and binds him or her for the duration of the contract.

However, the chances of it working for a software development team are not so good. Granted the salaries for different IT positions (and functions) are market-driven, but if one is not happy with the money, then he or she can switch jobs. Usually your company would not a have contract forcing that the person to stay.

Also, unlike rival sports teams, your competitors are not bound by a (league) rule that will prevent them from seeking your team members. Imagine you losing your only tester in the middle of the user acceptance testing for a crucial implementation.

Professional sports team also get away with meeting different types of treatment to their star players and other players. A reason for this is that the player's next contract depends upon the present performance, hence he or she must play well even if extremely dissatisfied with the team. But similar discontent amongst an IT team due to blatantly different treatment would result in demoralization, low productivity and low quality of output.

Everything Counts

It is true that successful product and applications have to be designed and coded very well, which means that the designers and developers must play important roles in their development.

It is also true that developing bug-free software as designed in the first attempt is almost impossible. It is also extremely rare that a software product or application could be used or maintained without any documentation.

So go figure which group is more important: designer and developers (brains and spinal cord of the team) or testers and technical writers (the colon of the team).

Everyone Must Feel Important

The resources required to do various activities within an IT project team requires that they posses different skill sets, experience and capabilities. So you have to recognize this distinction. The best way to recognize this is by giving appropriate responsibility, authority and market-driven monetary compensation.

After all, you wouldn't pay the same amount to your CEO and janitor. But if your janitorial staff goes on strike without any replacement, then pretty soon you would find out that your star CEO's productivity has gone down too as he or she would be more concerned about finding a working restroom then working on that proposal that needs to go out today.

One of the critical success factors for teams is that you must find ways to treat everybody fairly and make them feel important and appreciated. An important job of the project manager is to maintain high morale and enthusiasm of every team member. Sometimes this calls for instituting standard systems, procedures and protocols, and sometimes it calls for creativity.

Early in my career I worked in a big software development project in London. Informally, it had two types of teams--construction and destruction. The job of the construction team was to build the software, so naturally it consisted of developers, designers and analysts. The job of the destruction team was to destruct the software built by the construction team. These were the testers. Such an arrangement or informal organization maintained a very high level of enthusiasm and pride amongst all team members. Every body felt equally involved, appreciated and respected.

Reward Based Upon Individual Contribution and Overall Group Performance

Though the rewards could come in various forms, the best known (and innovated) is the monetary reward. There are many compensation packages that consider various types of contribution to encourage desired behavior. Such packages are quite common for senior executives and sales people. They could also be devised for other types of activities.

A quick analysis of salary packages for different types of job functions listed on SalaryWizards shows that a bonus constitutes a bigger portion of total compensation for call center agents than for managers. This is one way to keep call center agents motivated to do tedious jobs with at times unfriendly users/customers.

Similar incentives could be devised for other unglamorous activities. One could link the rewards and performance for testers to the number of different types of defects found. One could also publicly acknowledge the achievements of different team members or provide them with small giveaways for different types of achievements. The possibilities are endless and dependent upon specific situations.

IT project teams are like chains, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You can have a few talented and brilliant people who could be highly paid, satisfied and motivated. But all their great work would come to naught if there was someone who is not motivated enough to pull his or her weight. If you want your group project to succeed, then you must find ways to keep everyone motivated and satisfied.

Sunil is the CEO of Cerebral Works, a sales and marketing company that implements programs and solutions designed to increase sales and develop business for its clients. Strategic and results-oriented, Sunil is an entrepreneurial consultant who has founded a B2B company for the building and construction industry. An avid mountain climber and runner, Sunil has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and various peaks in the Himalayas and finished the Detroit Marathon. He holds an MBA degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a BS in Electronics and an MS in Mathematics from the BITS, Pilani, India. he can be reached via voicemail at (703) 395-9812 or via e-mail at  [email protected].