As a manager of a creative team, how often have you asked yourself the question “are my team doing enough to make me look good?”
If the answer has frequently been “no”, then you’ve probably wrestled with numerous approaches to remedy this problem. Here are a few commonly used techniques.
Encouraging ownership
The theory: By giving creatives and developers a greater stake in a project, they become more engaged, initiating and following through on improvements to the product.
The reality: Creatives and developers can’t agree on anything, and their petty squabbles over “creative differences” or “coding standards” will eventually become your problem, and reflect badly on you.
Threats ( the stick )
The theory: Threatening team members can help make them own the problem of insufficient training or staffing levels, leading to extra work effort and higher throughput or output.
The reality: some team members may resort to hypocondria or feigning family commitments ( or even emergencies ) to shirk on doing extra unpaid hours.
Praise and support
The theory: By telling the team how well they are doing and how pleased you are with their work, they will be motivated to do even better on future projects
The reality: This never works, because as soon as you suggest you’re even remotely satisfied, the team will hit the cruise control and begin to slack off.
Remuneration or bonuses ( the carrot )
The theory: People are motivated to work harder if you pay them more or offer them perks. – Herzberg et al
The reality: Once you start this cycle, they will come to expect these incentives and demand more and more for the same amount of work. And you only have so many cookies in the jar…
You may even have tried all of these methods, only to find a zero measurable net benefit or worse, a reversal of productivity because your team has become even more mopey and lazy than they were previously. At such times, you may well wonder if there is absolutely anything you can do to save this situation. The good news is there’s a little known hack that can get the results you seek. Even better, you can use it over and over again!
Commence quiet chanting
The entity you are about to summon may seem a little hesitant at first, but don’t worry… before long it will be beside you, serving you and feeding off your mental energy.
The workplace bogeyman is a transient form, a shape-shifter, an entity that cannot be reached by those beneath you. It can manifest itself in a myriad of ways, for example, conveying disapproval, instilling distrust and uncertainty, or working as a proxy for indirect threats. This invisible buffer can also absolve responsibility, cushion bad news, and offer incentives and promises that will never actually be delivered. And you can never be blamed, because you’re only the go-between. This multi-faceted creature can become your constant companion and your strong arm. It maintains easy access to the carrot or the stick while you remain pleasantly distant from the side effects of arbitrarily choosing one or the other.
So, now that you have some idea of what’s possible, let’s use a couple of real-life examples to demonstrate.
Example 1 – the ambit deadline
Start by hounding your target a day or so before a deadline you have completely fabricated and not discussed with anyone else. Ask questions like “is it finished yet?”, “what’s the problem?”, and “do I need to give this work to somebody else to make sure it gets done?”. The following day, get retrospective, for example “I thought you said you’d done that?”, or “did you see my email about all the issues I found last night?”. Now that you have your target well and truly on the back foot, summon the entity thus: “questions have been asked about how long this has been taking, I’m just trying to manage their expectations”.
See how it works? You’re now just a messenger, you’re not the bad guy anymore! You’ve neatly deflected any push-back from your lazy worker, while distancing yourself from the ( remember… completely fabricated ) urgency of completing the job. After all its not you who’s pushing, it’s them.
Example 2 – the performance review
It’s that time you dread every six months, where you somehow have to motivate your team to work harder without offering them any obtainable tangible benefit over the previous seven reviews. But this time one team member’s pre-filled form has come back with her sounding decidedly unmotivated, unfulfilled, and unrecognised. Oh dear! This is most definitely not the sort of thing you want your manager to see, or worse, HR to get hold of.
Clearly you have to somehow motivate this lazy and difficult-to-fire individual to rewrite their pre-filled Excel form so as to make your management style and minute free online training initiatives appear glowing, but how? Time to get conjuring. Simply suggest that a round of pay rises has been mooted by senior management, and that while you “can’t promise anything”, a good review will certainly go a long way in helping you represent said team member in a favourable light. Add a dash of urgency by suggesting it’s best to “strike while the iron’s hot”, and that delaying completing the form may jeopardise access to the pool of newly available cash. The team member then cites examples of numerous minor work successes and easy wins, which you can claim you managed elegantly when the time comes for your own review. Brilliant!
These are but two examples of how you can defer and deflect your intent and agenda using a proxy. Over time, an experienced manager can develop a vast assortment of unique and novel ways to punish poor performers, and motivate good performers to try harder. The end result, is a smoother path for you.
So get to it! Summon your workplace bogeyman… and reap the benefits!