Motivated and Prepared People ROCK IT!!

David J Paul Project Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business Manager

Kaplan and Norton in their Balanced Score Card ™ identify motivated, prepared and engaged employees as the foundational element for improved processes, customer satisfaction, and superior profits.

While there is a world-wide movement toward adopting the Balanced Score Card™ Management System with its strategic emphasis on motivated and prepared people at the base of the pyramid, managers in general remain puzzled because current research in organizational development and organizational behavior falls short of explaining the “how and why” motivated and engaged employees get that way. As a result, managers can’t manage ‘engagement’ and they know they have to do a better job of motivating and preparing their employees.

Today’s mindful managers and good Human Resource departments are convinced, however, that engaged employees are more productive, take fewer sick days, have greater intentions to stay on the job, seek cost-effective improvements in business processes and generally are stronger innovators. As a result these few enlightened managers seek to improve employee engagement, but without systematic guidance.

A central tenet to this present work is that since good managers create their firm’s competitive strategy systematically, those same managers should also create their firm’s ‘caring’ strategy with the same systematic care, one step at a time.