Motivation and Recognition “Lose Weight Trap”

I think, in many companies motivation, recognition and engagement have fallen into the “lose weight” trap. 

The lose weight trap is my new ground-breaking motivation theory (patent pending TM’d and all that.) The LWT (we need an acronym to be legit) is based on the idea that you can sell any solution to any problem as long as the new solution is easier than the real solution, whether it works or not.  

Think about losing weight. 

There is an entire industry built on the fact that you can lose weight as long as you find the next great way to do it – other than just eating less and exercising more.

We all know that weight (in most cases) is a function of input and output.  How many calories we consume versus how many we expend.  Any 7^th grader can do that kind of math.  Consume 38,000 calories – expend 7 and you might end up needing the seat belt extender on your next fight.

But… we don’t want to do that because – weight for it (pun intended) – it’s HARD.  So what do we do?

We scour the late-night TV commercials.  We google “overnight weight loss.”  We search twitter for a magic pill that will burn your fat (and your money) while you sleep.  We research new “theories” about how our body creates fat and burns fat (Are carbs good or bad now?  Not real sure – I think some are good some are bad.)  We look for ways to avoid the hard slog of losing weight.

And the market knows this.  They know just about everyone who needs to lose weight is lazy (otherwise they wouldn’t need to lose weight – see the logic here – brilliant eh?)  Now before you blow up my comment stream there are instances where metabolism, disease, etc. causes weight issues… but – for the vast majority of us metabolically-challenged X-large folks (and I’m firmly in the group needing to be in the next “Glucosomine study”) it really is a function of doing the work. 

So the market knows we’re lazy.  They then create a “fad” – or a new study that says – “if you just do this you will lose weight – easy, peasy.”

And we’re doing the same with motivation, recognition and rewards…

What’s the Buzz-word Kenneth?

• Gamification?
• Social Recognition?
• Mobile Recognition?
• Incentive Widgets and Apps for the iphone?
• Strategic Recognition?
• Employee Loyalty?
• Employee Engagement?
• Holistic Rewards?
• Total Rewards?

I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that recognition is not a fad or system, or a process.  It’s about people knowing what the culture is about – and highlighting behaviors other people exhibit that reflect that culture.

No late-night commercial.  No special software package.

Simply paying attention.  Simply knowing what to look for.  Simply taking the time to say thanks.  Simply letting people you work with know that something better and different happened because they showed up.

Do I need to gamify that?  Do I need to put that into a strategic plan?  Do I need to technologilize this into a SaaS platform the links to ultimate choice of awards in the universe?

Not really.

But like losing weight – we don’t want to the slog.  We don’t want to pay attention and make the effort.  We don’t want to task managers and executives with thanking people. 

We want a system, department, group, whatever – to do it for us.

Next Year Work Harder

Next year – 2012 (the last one for us Mayan types) should be the year of noticing and recognizing. 

Just do it and forget the buzzwords, the repackaging, the modernization, widetization, mobilization.

Just say thanks and mean it.

Just do the work.

Or if you’re lazy – call me – I’ll help you create a strategic reward program built on a SaaS infrastructure hosted in the cloud enabled by mobile OS and accessible via an Android/iPhone widget that is optimized for a tablet environment and connects to every freakin SKU google has indexed on the internet.

Or, I can get you some gift cards too… if you really want to make it easy.

Related articles

• When Was The Last Time You Recognized the CEO? (i2i-align.com)
• My Warning About New Incentive Research Foundation Study (i2i-align.com)
• Flipping the Funnel – Recognition Bottom Up? An IT Challenge (i2i-align.com)
• Solve Human Problems With Human Solutions (i2i-align.com)
• YOU Are the Reason Your Recognition Program Failed (i2i-align.com)