Friday Night Essence

"There is only one way . . . to get anybody to do anything. . . . And that is by making the other person want to do it."

Dale Carnegie

There is something I have been noodling around now for a couple of months and trying to implement at work and in my own life and I’m just going to do a little public brainstorming here. This is the first draft, but all original ideas are all first drafts aren’t they. I just love first drafts, eureka experiences and new born animals.

At work, I have been leading people differently than I ever had before.  This change was inspired by the idea of Friday night essences.  I started  thinking about the power of enthusiasm to give birth to productive effort. A Friday night essence is something that creates enthusiasm in you at your very core. Something you’d get excited enough about doing to forego television, socializing after work or other usual pastimes after a long hard week at the salt mines. My newly found enthusiasm boils down to: encouraging my workers to direct themselves.

There are two ways of motivating yourself - pushing or pulling. Friday night essences pull us toward action effortlessly. We want to spend time on our hobbies, interests, and other enthusiasms. Nobody has to tell a fisherman to schedule time on the weekend to go to the lake and drop a line in the water. He wants to. He thinks about it all week and can’t wait for the weekend to start. He reads magazines about it. He looks at boats, fishing gear, pours over the Cabela’s catalog, and drools over the newest lure, rod, reel, etc.

The power of the Friday night essences is that it pulls at your deepest motivations. I used to fish a lot. Every year I would go to Reed Lake in Northern Manitoba. The level of planning, effort, and thinking that went into that effort was prodigious, and I couldn’t have been happier. On the day I left, I'd get in the truck and drive all night straight through. Twenty four hours later, I'd be setting up camp next to the lake, and still couldn’t wait to get a line in the water.

Alternatively, I also have motivated myself and others historically by what I thought was “Iron Grip Control”. In this case, I became authoritarian, driving myself or others through force, criticisms, pushing, etc. What I didn’t realize was that when I did this with myself, I would naturally resist, pushing back, procrastinating, etc. It was easier to see in employees, their reaction to the cattle prod were more overt: sabotage, back talk, slowing down, creating diversions, etc. This effectively led to a battle of wills.

Recently, I started thinking about this by considering the difference in types of governments in the world. The shining example of the power of enthusiasm and the powerful motivation that self leadership creates is the United States of America during its early history. Peter Drucker states that the best book on leadership is the Federalist Papers which discusses the pro’s and cons of adopting the U.S. Constitution and the idea of self rule. This discourse covers the limitations, jealousies, the tendency to plunder and subjugate our neighbors, and the potential pitfalls in designing a system of self governance of human interaction in a free society.

In the eighties Peter Grace, Chairman of W.R. Grace, wrote a paper that analyzed economic growth versus the level of government control in various countries' economies. He charted economic growth versus taxation as a percent of GNP. GNP (Gross National Product) is the basic measure of production of goods and services. In essence, it measures the production in an economy. Taxation as a percentage of GNP measures the percentage of that economy’s production that is taken (by force) by the government and redistributed or spent, ostensibly on beneficial projects to help mankind. The correlation was readily apparent, the higher the level of taxation as a percent of GNP, the lower economic growth. Grace's analysis confirmed the deleterious effects of governmental versus individual control in an economy.

Why did the US economic engine eclipse every other country in the world in its early history? In a word, the answer is freedom. This, at its core, is a discussion of the benefits of freedom (self leadership) versus slavery (being directed by others). Every “well intentioned” political plan to benefit mankind requires increasing human subjugation to force. We don’t pay taxes “voluntarily” we pay them because of the violence that will be perpetrated against us if we refuse.

The world has become an exercise, similar to the misfortunes of the Donner Party. To survive, we eat our fellows. When this leads to further poverty, we return to the halls of congress and demand the sacrifice of yet more to feed the many. We don’t see the carnage that results. It is masked in the apparent benefit of governmental spending, but every percentage drop in gross national production that results is borne on the backs of society’s members. Untold misery is heaped upon society under the disguise of good. It is truly the enactment of the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Ok, if freedom (self leadership) is a good for governing society, why not our businesses? Suddenly, I understood the mistake in how we structure most businesses. The primary essences of a business is to make money. Yet we run them like a military boot camp. The typical organization is based upon lines of authority with a leader at the top ( boss, supervisor, manager, foreman, congressman, king, president, priest, minister, parent, etc) telling his subordinates (slaves) what to do. Then we invent tools (six sigma, feedback loops, performance measurement, cattle prods, straight jackets, policies, rules, organizational objectives, laws, etc.) to insure that the leader’s vision is realized. We negate the inherent value and talents of every subordinate telling them, that they must subjugate their interests to reach the greater benefit of the group. I’m sorry, but my redneck is showing…Bull Shit!

Every employee is potentially the source of creative ideas to improve our productivity in business. The only way to get someone (including ourselves) to do something whole heartedly is to get them to WANT TO!   The key to this shift in managing people is answering this question: What makes people want to work?  Abraham Maslow called the pinnacle of human motivation self actualization.  Dale Carnegie said, the thing we all want out of work and out of life is "a feeling of importance".  So how can I give that feeling of importance to my workers? 

I can foster a feeling of importance in my employees with compliments, praise, rewards and encouragement.  I destroy that feeling with criticisms, condemnation, punishment, and negativity.  I can foster the feeling of importance by seeing the good in them, believing in them and giving them the authority to direct their efforts.  I destroy that feeling by doubting them, micro-managing them, checking up on them, and prodding them like they are recalcitrant mules.  I must encourage them to reach the business's primary objective, generating profits.  I must give them the authority to direct their own efforts and give them honest feedback about how they are doing.   Inspired, engaged committed employees will rise far beyond the minimum level of productivity set for them, by a boss.  I must encourage and allow self directed entrepreneurial effort.

When was the last time you threw yourself completely into a project or effort? When you threw out your own self limiting thinking and drove a project to completion over the screaming of sore muscles, others criticisms, apparent inadequacies of current technology, tools, available time, and excuses? You were being a self leader, and your intensity was driven by your own insights and engagement, your refusal to take no for an answer, your genius. This is what we loose, discount and discard in our approach to managing most businesses today.

What about our self management? When we push, drive, force, or coerce ourselves – we are falling into the same trap. We have become our own overseer. Can’t you just hear the whip cracking in the background? We are choosing to direct our self using pain. This is what creates procrastination. We are choosing between the lesser of two evils. Do this project, read this book, type this report, get ready for this meeting, etc. or else. Most of this is learned this at our parents knee. We learned to subordinate our true selves to the demands of others through fear of retaliation. We continue to manage ourselves and others through threats of retaliation. When you think about it, how do you feel about being treated this way? It makes you resentful doesn’t it?

We are not motivated to greatness by grievances. We don’t tap the natural self drive that is our and others birthright by using force or threats of force to motivate ourselves or others to action. We generate resistance to action, ineffectiveness and half hearted effort instead of inspired engagement. Think about it.

c 2007 James T. Hitt