I have been working with a small team in Atlanta, GA the past couple weeks and used a lot of the skills learned from our Operational Excellence transformation. Part of those skills include Gemba Walks to see and learn the process and system. While on a Gemba Walk, we interact with many people, trying to learn what they have learned over many years and building up their ability to see flow and interruptions to flow (waste). On one of these walks I spoke with a few people that brought out some amazing insights that I want to share.
[Note: Names have been changed, but the stories are factual]
W. Edwards Deming in his book New Economics for Industry, Government, and Education describes the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. He uses the story of a child helping his mother clean dishes. The child helps his mother because he sees her struggling to do it all and wants to help. He has an intrinsic motivation to help his mother, a natural empathy and pride to help the woman that helps him all the time. The mother, seeing her child's efforts as something to be rewarded, decides one day to give him a dollar after he finishes cleaning. The child looks at her with a confused look, but takes the dollar. As weeks go by, the mother continues paying the child, until suddenly the child stops cleaning. The mother asks "why have you stopped cleaning?" confused since she still gives him money. "I want two dollars," the child responds. What happened here? Deming describes the psychology of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. Intrinsically we have our own motivation and drive to do something. It can be the inherent empathy that drives us to help others, or a pride in our own work. Whatever it is, it is internal and we feel good for it. The moment we introduce extrinsic motivation, we take away nearly all of that intrinsic value we once had.
I remembered this story as I spoke to one of the employees in Atlanta, Bruce. On the Gemba Walk we stood at our dock platform and watched the flow of product leaving the building. Our project deals with the consolidation of trucks delivering product across the nation so we focused on the flow of that product out. We watched as Bruce coordinated with operations inside the plant and with the truck drivers. He knew exactly how much product was going on the truck and when it needed to leave. He was a conductor of this little orchestra. As he finished loading and closing out one of the trucks, we asked a few questions. We wanted to get an understanding of how he did what he did, and then asked what he saw as the major obstacles in the continued success.
"Other than trying to get the plant operations finish on time, it takes a lot of learning to do what I do. I need to know how much product to expect, and then I figure out which size trailer we're going to need. Sometimes they schedule a smaller trailer, but I saw the volume inside, so I know if I don't say something we will have to spend more to get an extra trip out."
"How did you figure all this out?" We asked.
"I have this drive to learn, it's what has motivated me and got me into this position."
When we asked why there might be variation in the process he said he thought it might have to do with others not having the knowledge he has, and maybe don't have that same drive or motivation to learn. For Bruce, this motivation to learn is intrinsic. We see the outcome of this learning, and his reward is his own sense of accomplishment, a pride in his work. We thanked him for what he does and left him with a question to challenge him, "how can you help others find that same motivation to learn?"
Another story comes to mind on this same Gemba Walk. This time we were inside the plant at the operation just a step back from the final dock loading step. We watched the operational flow and jotted down some notes on what we were learning. Then we went to talk to John. John worked one of the manual parts of the operation. His job was to take the product and stack it into the proper rack for delivery. Each rack was assigned to a different destination. The racks he was currently loading were a "jackpot" for multiple destinations. We talked to him about what struggles he had or he sees, and he asked what we were looking at in the process. We told him we are looking at the surface consolidation process as a whole system. He laughed, "Well I'm definitely not helping you with what I'm doing right now!" We asked why and he explained what was happening.
"Well you see, at some point in the night we know we are going to miss a few of the trips, so they switch the plan to jackpot all of these destinations. So when we send it over to the consolidation center, they have to go through all of these again and move them to the right destination. Do you think we ought to just separate them all instead?"
John's knowledge of the system was apparent. We can also see the intrinsic motivation to help out others downstream in the process. Looking at things in this way, we see again a personal pride in the work that motivates John to think about how he might affect the performance of others in the system.
One last story from the week. Later in the week, I walked with a manager who I had met previously from another plant. Will asked that I join him for a walk, he wanted to show me an operation he had some ideas about. We walked over to a manual operation where our employees struggle to move larger products by hand and put them into containers based on destination. As we watched the operation he says, "look at how much effort she has to go through. On average we have people taking 22 steps carrying those heavy items."
Listening to Will, I saw his drive to make the work easier for the employee. After watching the operation he walked through how he wanted to change the layout to make this easier. We walked through how the new layout would look and noted that on average we would only have to take 8 steps. I said "so that's a lot less steps for the employee, that ought to make this much easier for them!" He said "I am also cutting down on the decisions they have to make. So by simplifying and making it easier, we also make it much faster. Since they are not going to be as tired later in the operation, they also won't make as many errors." Will had this fire in his eyes as he talked to me about this, but there also was a fear - what if he was wrong. So we just walked through how he would implement this new layout. We got to the point of working with the employees to ask what they struggled with, what tired them out, and then work on the logic of reducing the amount of work we had to do. Will would show them how to think about making the work safer and simpler and they would work together to make that happen. Will had great ideas, but he was afraid of failure. This fear is due to the extrinsic motivation his management put on him - "we need you to make this better, and if you can do that we will recognize you as a real problem solver." This also meant he would be in line for more promotions.
What I find amazing about these stories is how we all have some intrinsic motivation within us. For me, motivation is the drive to learn. This same thing was Bruce's drive as well. Thinking about Will, he also had a strong intrinsic drive to make things better for the employee, but he was hindered by the extrinsic motivation put upon him by his management. As leaders, especially in organizations deploying Lean principles or Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, we must be able to recognize the intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivations of our people. The moment we take an intrinsic motivation and make it extrinsic, we destroy all personal drive of the individual.
When asked "should I reward people for making improvements?" I think to these stories and give a warning that should you do so, you will in the long run destroy all motivation to make future improvements. We all are paid for the purpose and value we provide to an organization, but what drives us to do our best work is intrinsic. We must find what these internal motivation factors are for each person, and we utilize our new leader tools such as the Gemba Walk to learn what this is for others. Identify that motivation and build it up for each person. If learning drives a person, challenge that person with questions to help them learn. If helping others drives the person, give them the authority to make changes to help those people. Not everything has to be a carrot and a stick, in fact it's more beneficial to everyone if we spend more time building our relationships and abilities to make more and more value for our Customers.