Motivation is the key to success
A competent leader knows that professional knowledge workers are not so much motivated by external factors, like money or status, but by intrinsic factors. These include: job satisfaction, appreciation, producing something with quality, working in a stimulating and pleasant atmosphere, collaborating with inspiring and friendly colleagues, making a difference, and most of all: learning and growing. Managing a context in which these factors are made possible is an important task for leaders in a knowledge-intensive organization.
Shapiro (1985) provides a handy list of thirteen ways to motivate a knowledge worker:
• Recognize accomplishment
• Provide flexibility and autonomy
• Be available for support
• Give responsibility and accountability
• Show how tasks fit the big picture
• Encourage self-established goals
• Allow for intrinsic rewards
• Individualize supervision
• Provide feedback immediately
• Work on the Pygmalion effect (this idea is known as “the self-fulfilling prophecyâ€.
When you believe the team will perform well, in some strange, magical way they
do. And similarly, when you believe they won’t perform well, they don’t.)
• Set tasks that allow for experience of accomplishment.
Leading an organization of knowledge workers is extremely difficult to do. Many top
managers have learned the hard way that they needed to get rid of their old planning &
control habits.
Instead of relying on rules, procedures, and planning & control, leaders in knowledge intensive organizations should lead through shared values and collective ambition. A
knowledge-worker is like a horse: you can lead it to water, but you can not force it to drink.
The most important task of leaders in knowledge-based organizations is to match the
capabilities and aspirations of each individual knowledge worker with the aspirations of the organization as a whole. By looking for these shared values, a good leader facilitates the ambitions of the knowledge worker; thereby releasing energy and potential, while at the same time pursues the company goals.
