Savage counsel – motivating your team
Each week for Encore Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas. This week he looks at motivating your team
Hi Chris,
How do you motivate your team? I’m having a shit of a time trying to fire up my mob and could do with some pointers.
At Singleton Ogilvy & Mather in the early 2000s, the motivator was simple: it was said a bullet was fired at your head the moment you joined – your job was to run as fast as you could to stop it from hitting you. It was, simply put, a high expectation environment. Tough place. Very hard working. It was all about the client and all about results. Some hated it. They usually left pretty quickly. Fair enough. But the people I respected there absolutely thrived on it. It was a badge of honour to survive and make it in that agency. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere.
One of the pillars of that culture was the Monday morning 8.30am meeting. Everyone in the agency had to turn up. Singo was there. Russell Tate. Agency CEO Chris Mort led the session. These were tough guys. Anyone could be called on to step forward and update on something. Hearts beat fast. Adrenaline flowed. It was frightening. It was wonderful. And it was totally inspiring.
And here’s the point. I heard famous explorer Tim Jarvis talk recently about retracing the extraordinary 1916 exploration done by Ernest Shackleton and five companions. Tim repeated their incredible journey, sailing a small rowing boat with five others 800 miles through the roughest ocean in the world, from Antarctica to the island of South Georgia. He said the teamwork and motivation of the crew was outstanding when they were under pressure on the high seas. But as soon as they landed on solid ground and rested, discontent, disagreement and disunity began to unfold. His message: “Pressure builds teamwork.” I believe it.
I have always found the most motivated, happiest teams are those that are 10 per cent overworked.
No doubt you’re thinking ‘gasp – what an old fart he is’. It’s a seriously out of fashion view and lacking new age hipness and beanbags, mobile massage and doona days. So be it. For me, motivating teams is about setting high standards, insisting they are adhered to, working with pace and with deadlines that force action, regular communication, and a fair dose of friendly pressure on all. Lead from the front, set the example, but make it a place where your team members feel they are kind of special to be part of that high-performing team. Because, you know what? They bloody well are.
Chris Savage
This first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.
I’ve experienced the above where it worked amazingly, and where it was a complete disaster. Not in agencies, but in marketing companies.
In the amazing example, the leaders were quick to support their hard working team. They realised that getting things wrong at times in the fast paced environment was inevitable and the only way to ensure continued creativity, othewise fear took over eventually. For creativity you need to be as fearless as possible.
In the disasterous example, the leaders liked to make examples of people with summary firings to “keep everyone on their toes” – it lead to a blame and duck-responsibility culture where many people who survived were experts at not leaving fingerprints on anything likely to go wrong, or worse, setting others up to take the fall.
Another observation: in the first example, everyone was in it together – one team -and we’d all go for a drink after work together every Friday night without fail.
In the later examples – I’ve seen this twice – internal competition was created between 2 marketing teams and everyone started competing internally and forgot the real competition was the other companies trying to knock us out.
User ID not verified.
I think Nick has hit the nail on the head. It all comes down to if the team is competing together or against each other. Flatter hierarchy’s, where the bottom of the chain is valued for what they do as a part of the team as much as the top, will ultimately create a strong team.
People in any group situation will bond in someway, it’s human nature. It’s just a matter of if they bond together as total group or sub groups with in the set.
User ID not verified.
Dear Friend,
It’s my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country, though I have not met with you before but I believe one has to risk, confiding in someone to succeed sometimes in life.
There is this huge amount of money United State Dollars (USD$8.700, 000.00) which I inherit from my late father, in a Bank here in Cotonou Benin Republic before he was assassinated by unknown persons.
Now I decided to invest this money in your country or anywhere safe enough outside Africa for security purposes. I want you to help me to transfer this fund into your country for investment purposes. If you can be of assistance to me I will be pleased to offer you 40% of the total fund.
Get back to me via my personal Email: (removed by mumbrella)
Thank you and God bless you.
From Mr. Alex Melvyn,
User ID not verified.
“a bullet fired at your head the moment you joined”
“tough guys”
“frightening”
Well, I guess that’s one way of motivating your team. But all you’re really doing is motivating the ruthless bastards, because you’ve given them the kind of dog-eat-dog environment they’ll love.
I guess that’s why singo’s had the reputation of being a great place to work if you were a prick, and a terrible place to work if you weren’t.
Luckily for those of us who aren’t pricks, it’s entirely possible to create a high-performance environment that isn’t run by fear. Really, it is.
I would suggest that’s what people should aim for. Gen Y (and anyone who isn’t borderline sociopathic) doesn’t want bullets fired at their heads. They want to be inspired, to be surrounded by high-performance peers in an environment that will push them to do great things.
Good luck attracting any kind of talent today if your philosophy is based on the fear & dread model of the old Singo’s. The only people you’ll attract and keep are nasty sociopaths and hacks who can’t get a job in a less awful environment. Sadly, sometimes you will also attract people who are both of those things, all rolled into one.
User ID not verified.