You, me, Jack and Joe are different. We are from different socioeconomic backgrounds with different ideas of what drives us.

So how can we motivate losers anyway? Lets start with “Change”

Change
Most people hate the effort to change. Losers hate it more. Life sucks, picking myself up and being better is hard work. Making a difference means going that extra mile. How shall we stress the importance of “Making the Difference”? OR Should we concentrate on “How easy the extra Mile is”?

SELL

Marketing does a great job here! They always concentrate upon “How easy..” part. The great marketeers do anyways. It’s always “Easily LOSE 10kgs” before “Look Good or thin” or whatever.

Sell the dream! Sell the lifestyle with great house and a fast car. Sell Success!! But success is an appraisal away. What about now?

REWARD

If Company does well, so do you! Isn’t that why variable bonuses play such a huge part? But thats a far fetched idea. How will you motivate people who have never won?

Employee of the month??
Another thankless effort. Who wants to be employee of the month when i make barely make my ends meet?

Hate Fear Paranoia

Somehow negative traits seems to always latch really strong on people. These seem a lot easier to kindle. History does think so. How about terrorism in the name of ISLAM?

Try this. Tell someone he is insanely brilliant or call him an idiot. Guess which one will evoke a faster emotion?

HATE: Death To Mediocrity

I paraphrase someone, ” We hated Windows and thought it was evil!”. Hate mediocrity. Hate slouchy workers. Create teams which will force slackers to do better. Hate convention unless wisdom over rules.

FEAR: Sell Before Market TANKS!
People sell because they expect the market to fall and the markets fall because people resort to panic selling! It’s easier to ask someone to be ‘afraid’ than be ‘fearless’.

People seem to react to realisation of consequence soon enough to be afraid. Fear about losing your job. Fear about bringing food to the table. Fear of falling below expectations.

What about the consequence when ‘Generals’ who ask ‘Soldiers’ to fight for glory? Or is it Wealth? Glory and snatched wealth seem easier to obtain than death. Oil in Iraq OR Most unpopular in World! We know the answer to that one.

So we have everything almost. We have covered short and medium terms but what about long?

Freedom Wealth Power

History does show that people are motivated by things they desire. Desires almost always start with freedom then prosperity and finally power. Free from red tape, free from a bad manager, provide wealth as you sell it and empower employees.

Summary

1. Short Term ‘Hate Fear Paranoia‘
2. Medium Term ‘Sell Reward‘;
3. Long Term ‘Freedom Wealth Power‘.

a BIG Post Script

• Negative traits have always dominated Positive ones. So why are they negative anyway? Because they give you a bad feeling. Lie to your Mom when you are seven you’ll know; Things do change though, a decade later. The bad feeling still exists but is no longer dominant.
• If history has more examples of hate and fear ruining nations then how did Gandhi and Martin Luther King succeed? Chill! Its a lousy trick question.
• Discussion on an HBS article is very interesting.
• Excellent article on initiating change

Does this extrapolate quite weakly on MASLOW

I hate bank X.

The employees of bank X were rated on their ability for higher number of ‘product sales’. As is the norm, the bank reviewed it’s employees vis-a-vis revenue generated.

This is akin to a local restaurant selling a large number of dinner plates in an effort to improve revenues but by compromising on quality. Restaurants are known by their food, ambiance and in general hospitality.

I do not intend to compare the hospitality and/or service industries. But this does warrant attention whether the revenue expectations levels by promoter and the satisfactions levels the customer expects from the company are aligned or should they be aligned?

Customers who will not hesitate to voice their opinion about what they think about your product/service and even sport a signboard to your competitor.

The bank had no system in place which measured customer satisfaction levels per employee(info-courtesy a friend who worked for the bank). A bit of googling helped me.

They may well do to read this(pdf) and see if it applies to them.

You can find a more pointed article on customer satisfaction in banks here(pdf). This professor has a view on the topic.

After a year of bad service i decided to close my peanut worth savings account with them and opened a new one with a larger more aggressive bank. I am a satisfied customer today.

used to be an avid Age OF Kings player. For those not in the know, it’s a multiplayer game played on an online gaming portal. You can form teams and compete against other teams. If you prefer you can also play a one-on-one i.e. two players compete.

Over the years i realized that a few concepts really stuck on to me even after i quit the game years ago. The reason i list them here is because i would rather jot them down here than anywhere else. Also it helps me give myself a perspective.

Here goes ..

1. Start Early

One of the most important aspects of the game was managing your economy. If you last the initial battles, then the strength of your economy alone will decide the course of the game.

Translated into life, this means start saving small but start saving!! The longer period you can save the greater the time your interest accrues to provide higher returns.

2. Give It All

Put in the maximum effort that you can in each and every battle, you might just win by a small margin, but a win is a win at the end of the day.

3. Salvage

The real good players never fought a losing battle and salvaged whatever they could, whenever they could.

This strategy might be slow and boring but in the long run it works.. and it works well!! Don’t batter yourself on a lost cause. You have to live to fight another day!

4. Controversy Is Short Lived

Kids quite often used to curse and call each other names just to garner attention.The name/fame associated with such incidents quickly fade from public memory.

Only true skill, ability will stand you in good stead over the long run.

5. It’s All In The Mind

I remember feeling very low before a game and totally exhilarated after a win just 15 minutes later. It was only a case of mood. He agrees.

6. Develop Good Habits

Habit yourself to always protect yourself (in game) and you will naturally construct a wall even without thinking every time you play.

Develop good habit in your daily life and you shall never go wrong. This is very similar to my stress on developing good processes than relying on people.

That’s it.

Top 5 Reason Why The Customer Is Always Right Is Wrong got me thinking on how many times we have had customers who are nothing but a cost to the company.

These customers generally form the Long Tail;

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article ^[1] to describe the niche strategy of certain business such as Amazon.com or Netflix. The distribution and inventory costs of those business allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group of persons that buy the hard-to-find or “non-hit” items is the customer demographic called the Long Tail….

Credit Card Issuers face such people all the time. If you were in a business of non standard products; how would you tackle this situation? Some software product companies circumvent this problem by trying to route support calls from rare customers and customers who only call never ask for paid support to the paid line.

What about a real tangible product like ours? The only thing they can do is to reduce the carrying cost of such customers to as minimal levels as possible. This helps them retain market share (credit cards are a highly competitive market) without being a burden on the bottom line.