Square Wheels® and The Manager as Motivator

Square Wheels® Manager as Motivator Bundle

The presentation materials in The Manager as Motivator PowerPoint presentation file focus on tools for involving, engaging and enlisting people - it shares a simple and highly effective approach for improvement and involvement that uses our Square Wheels® cartoons and straightforward approach.

One of Scott Simmerman's (the author and Square Wheels® creator) favorite training quotes is, While not an absolute truth, it neatly represents the basic idea that people do not take care of things they don't own.

Based on our international workshops as well as feedback from a wide variety of other sources, it seems that most managers and employees believe that specific and implementable ideas for improvement already exist within the organization in the thinking of its people. But most of these opportunities go unrecognized for a variety of reasons. Similarly, the best approaches to motivating people also already exist - intrinsic motivation comes from within and has a lot to do with a feeling of ownership.

What seems evident to Scott as he looks back on his over 20+ years in consulting, is that the process of determining key performance measures with managers and actively involving them in the design of the improvement programs were the critical success factors in implementation, along with providing good feedback to the performers. His personal efforts in gathering information and ideas involved speaking with a lot of people including top performers and low performers to solicit their thoughts about what could be done differently. This wandering around provided him with great background and minimized the perception that this change was being done TO the workers - they had a voice. This interactive feedback helped to align expectations and goals as well as generate a level of employee involvement in how things were done.

These experiences are instrumental in Scott's thinking about managing and motivating people through the use of facilitated idea-generation sessions and the use of Square Wheels® illustrations. The approach and the tools in this presentation are all designed to help managers involve and engage people in generating issues of potential improvement and specific ideas for improvement. So, that is what you get! And you get Scott's support -- you can access him directly for sharing issues and opportunities and adaptations and ideas - he views this Powerpoint package as a developing set of tools for organizational improvement.