Increasing Motivation

using the Perception Dynamics approach

Increasing the motivation of staff is traditionally either thought of as either reliant on the skills of managers, or on the effectiveness of the reward systems. The Perception Dynamics approach to understanding and improving motivation shows that this is a very limited view of exactly which organisational systems have the most effect on motivation.

The Perception Dynamics approach allows you, not only to identify the systems that motivate staff to be effective, but also to identify the various organisational systems that are either unwittingly de-motivating staff, or alternatively motivating staff to achieve conflicting, misaligned or even just simply inappropriate goals.

The reason that these types of situations occur is that the traditional approaches to motivation are often based on answering the question "how can we improve the motivation of our staff". The Perception Dynamics approach shows how this is usually the wrong starting point. In order to create a situation where staff become highly motivated and effective, it is essential to first start at identifying the services being offered, the customer needs that those services are fulfilling, and the factors that are critical to the service being effective and successful.

Once the critical factors of the cost effectiveness of the various services have been identified, systems can be developed to enable staff to monitor the progress towards providing the most effective services. Once the control systems are in place to maximise the effectiveness of the services, the Perception Dynamics approach shows the various ways to ensure that staff take full ownership of optimising the performance of those services.

Motivating staff should not be viewed in isolation, but rather as part of a holistic approach to improving organisational performance.