Are You a Shusa?

Ty is a work management evangelist; "accidental" project manager and marketing veteran with over 25 years of experience.

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

It’s no secret that command-and-control management methods aren’t very effective at motivating today’s workforce to produce greater value with fewer resources. At Toyota, the role of Shusa instills a sense of personal ownership in project outcomes. Here are thoughts on creating a similar environment for your teams.

If you haven’t read Eric Ries’ book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, you need to pick it up. Although most project managers probably don’t consider themselves to be entrepreneurs, I wonder if they should. In fact, Ries suggests that business leaders and project teams should consider themselves to be “entrepreneurs” and should be working to create the innovation that will make our organizations successful.

Last month I wrote about the need for project teams to have Some Skin in the Game. There were a number of comments about whether or not that “skin in the game” should be monetary compensation. To be sure, a bonus or other financial compensation is something most people would be immediately drawn to, but I’m not convinced that it’s the best way to motivate people —or engender a sense of skin in the game. Earlier this year, I read Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink (…

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