How can I motivate people under me?

Most managers ask themselves that typical question.
In my opinion managers can motivate their employees by doing the following:


1. Set clear and possible objectives (based on the organization goals) and align them with employees' goals.

• Employees work much better when they understand the organizational goals and consequently contribute to their work objectives and totheir work plan. Ensure that the work objectives are "SMARTER":
  o Specific,
  o Measurable,
  o Acceptable,
  o Realistic,
  o Timely,
  o Extending of capabilities, and
  o Rewarding to those involved.
• Advice and encourage them to follow-up the achievement indicators and let them strongly share you the required corrective actions.
• Let them know that you recognize theattainment of their achievements.
• Most organizations have career-path and reward system for their employees such as promotions, salary increase, and bounce. The goal of an employee is to advance his/her career-path and get rewarded. Ensure that you have the career-path and reward system of your employees and link it with achieving the organizational goals.
• Be brave by giving employees what their performance deserves.
• Communicate your employees' achievements to upper management to make the organization is welling to achieve their goals.
  
  "Employees will trust on the organization and get motivated because they feel their achievements are useful, recognized and rewarded"

2. Support employee motivation by using organizational systems

• Don't just count on cultivating strong interpersonal relationships withemployees to help motivate them. The nature of these relationships can change greatly, for example, during times of stress. Instead, use reliable and comprehensive systems in the workplace to help motivate employees. For example:
  o Establish compensation systems,
  o Employee Performance Systems,
  o Organizational Policies and procedures, etc.
  
  "Establishing a systems and structures helps ensure clear understanding and fair treatment of employees"

3. Make your employees more confidence and don’t motivate by fear

• Encourage your employees to have Confidence. When employees believe "I can't do it" they tend to give up. Lack of confidence is a persistent motivation problem. It could happen when performance expectations are:
  o Unrealistic,
  o workloads are impossibly high, and/or
  o Training fails to keep pace with employee needs.
• Let your Employees speak freely "I can't do it" when they can't. Why are Employees afraid to tell the manager they "can't do it?"
• Many employees fear that if they say they can't do something, the manager will assign the duty to someone else. Consequently, employees go through the motions, giving the appearance that everything is fine. As a result, confidence problems go largely unnoticed. The guilty party is the corporate culture that does not permit employees to talk openly.

"Fear can be a great motivator but for a very short time.

Ensuring that your employees are confidence to do their assignments and speak freely if they can't do will enhance their motivation"

4. Understand what is satisfying your employees

• What motivates one person may not even motivate another. Challenging work, for example, is motivating to some employees, intimidating to others; some employees prefer the certainty of a fixed routine, while others thrive on task variety. The solution to this problem is so simple that most managers overlook it:
  o Understand your employees
  o Ask them what things motivate them. Employees will gladly tell you what they want from you. You can periodically, make a face-to-face meeting to speak freely with them and lessen to their ambition, aspiration, and even problems.

"Understanding your employees help you to effectively motivate them"

The Balanced Scorecard, Step By Step

From the previous post we can understand the importance of using BSC to make strategic plans succeed which can be summarized in four terms:

1. Help Manager/employees to understand their organization strategy

2. Eliminate or reduce the objectives that are not linked to the strategy of the organization.

3. Make Resources such as Time, Money are effectively allocated to things that are more critical to the organization.

4. Make managers effectively balance between strategy & short-terms tactical decision-making.

Therefore, you should think of the Balanced Scorecard as a management system, not just another performance measurement program

In this post we need to know steps to build the Balanced Scorecard. From my experience, the best process consists of 8 steps over 3 phases:

Phase A. Feed the BSC by Your Organization Strategy

1. Identify your stakeholders and determine their requirements
2. Organizational Assessment
3. Communicate and align the organization around a clear and concise
   strategy
4. Determine the major strategic areas
   

Phase B. Build the BSC

1. Strategy MAP: Build a strategic grid for each major strategic area
   Establish
2. Strategic objectives (measures, target, & initiatives/projects) on each
   strategic grid.
   

Phase C. BSC Deployment

1. Automating the BSC: push the entire process into other parts of the organization until you construct a single coherent management system.
2. Learning and development: Feedback, Evaluation, corrective actions

Note:

• Reviewing and aligning the first scorecard with other parts of the business (divisions, operating units, departments, etc.).
• Cascade the Corporate Scorecard into lower level scorecards after letting each division review the first scorecard.
• Build good reporting system
• it is preferable to use a software application to help pull together the Balanced Scorecard.