Pulling is the new pushing

 

This past Sunday I was waiting for the bus and noticed an advertisement that caught my attention. A varied assortment of coffee capsules with 40% off. I got up, scanned the QR code and swiftly closed the purchase. This got me thinking; would I have bought the capsules if a salesperson would have persuaded me over the phone? Most likely not. And this is because there is a fundamental difference between pushing and pulling. When someone pulls is making his own choices and is in complete control of his acts and thoughts. Pushing, on the contrary, leads to distrust and lack of motivation. This phenomenon can also be observed in the workplace.

“You have to do A (because I say so)”. Pushing work in this manner leads to unsatisfied and unmotivated individuals, a win/lose situation. The manager might get his people to complete the assigned work, but it will cost him dearly. Burn-outs and sick leaves will climb and thereby increase the working environment toxicity. On the contrary, when an individual pulls work he feels motivated and delivers results that often exceed expectations. A win-win setting is created. In this situation, the manager works alongside the team and ensures that they have all the required tools and knowledge to carry out the work. And he also removes any impediments the team may encounter along the way… (where have I heard that before?).

There is a graphical manner to quickly visualize these concepts. Imagine a game in which three individuals must transfer as many balls as possible between two buckets with the condition that each ball must be touched by all six hands before it can be dropped off in the receiving bucket. In the first situation, the manager is feeding the balls to the team, one at a time. Once the first ball has been placed in the bucket, the manager feeds (pushes) the second ball, and so forth. In a second situation, in which the manager does not intervene, the team quickly realizes that they can handle more than one ball at a time. In this setting, the team picks new balls at their convenience, in a self-organized manner. You can rapidly figure out which situation yields the highest output of collected balls. In conclusion, a team – or an individual – that pulls his work will be not just more motivated, but also more efficient (more with less). The virtuous circle is then closed; higher motivation leads to higher output, which leads to even higher motivation, and so on.

To wrap it up: think of a company’s vision. Is it something that should be decided on the top floor of the HQ office and trickle down to the rest of the organization? Or should it be a joint inclusive effort from all the workforce? Stephen Covey wrote that he once was in a hotel in which he felt extremely well treated. Every single employee went out of his way to ensure that he had an unforgettable stay. Upon checking out he asked a member of the staff how they managed to keep up such a great service. As Stephen suspected, every single hotel employee participated in defining the hotel’s vision. A valuable reminder that pulling – in this case, a company’s vision – can lead to long-term win-win states.