Motivation Matters - Motivation Matters Newsletter December 2005

Newsletter

Issue 3 December 2005

Welcome to the third edition of our newsletter!

This is such a busy time for us all, so we have made this edition much shorter than is normal. In our third edition you will find these articles:

* 2005 - a great year
* Exciting changes at Motivation Matters for 2006
* Our second Great Leader article reviewed
* The third of our Best Practice topics – pepping up performance
* Notes from our current thinking

1. 2005 – a great year

We would like to thank all our clients, suppliers and colleagues for making 2005 such a great year for us.

2006 offers such great opportunities and we are excited at the opportunity to bring our “bottom line” benefits to a great many more organisations.

2. Exciting changes at Motivation Matters in 2006

To continue building on 2005 we have decided to re-brand the business.

But don’t worry; we will still be your first line resource for motivation matters and boosting that bottom line profit through people’s performance.

In fact motivation matters will continue to be the only area in which we work.

We have employed the services of a leading marketing organisation to promote us. We are doing this because we want more organisations to have the experience of profitable and enjoyable work that comes from people working hard.

You know how these marketing people love to think out of the box? They have come up with some fantastic ideas! Look out for the January newsletter for the details.

The launch of the new brand will be celebrated by a huge number of new opportunities to learn how to improve motivation in your organisation.

3. Florence Nightingale – Great Leader

As I’m sure you know by now, Florence Nightingale was the subject of our second Great Leader article.

Her image as the “Lady with the lamp” has a lot to do with the time in which she was working. She was extremely unpopular with the male hierarchy at the time. This was a time when female medical doctors were a rarity, it being widely thought a waste of time to train females in such things. Of course this was pre-Emancipation, women did not yet have the right to the parliamentary vote.

Miss Nightingale delivered nothing less than a revolution in the careful administration of Army provisioning. The introduction of modern statistical methods was her doing and she wasn’t shy about making a fuss when something could be better.

Thousands of soldiers’ lives were saved through her new work methods. Prior to her arrival 90% of fatalities were due to illness rather than battle losses. Florence Nightingale exhibited a large and accurate capacity to do work. She recognised things that needed to be changed and set about these “culture change” interventions by every means at her disposal. Successfully too!

Please look at the full article on our website.

Do you have any ideas for other Great Leaders? In fact we could give you the opportunity to write about the deeds of the hero or heroine that inspired you!

Please e-mail us your suggestions or writings here .

4. The Best Practice forum – Pepping up performance

The chart shows the effect on organisation performance of the relative strengths of management and staff motivation.

We think you’ll find value by considering where on the chart you would place your organisation.

High	Occasional success despite a total lack of management support	Staff are committed and excited but think management could do a lot more to help	Things are going pretty well but staff feel insufficiently supported	Continuous evolution of business processes and success!
	A long serving staff member remembers something changing	Everyone is excited because something changed for the better!	We’re doing ok, we’re surviving	Management are fairly happy but the staff feel somewhat isolated and dictated to
Staff motivation strength	There is a story that once upon a time something changed	Management and staff talk but nothing much happens	Management has lots of ideas but not much gets done	Management have some good ideas but staff are terribly frustrated and uncooperative
Low	Nothing ever changes	Management talks about changing things but usually give up	Management push a few changes through but they never work	Everything that is tried fails miserably in the end

Low Management process strength High

We hope you find this a useful tool and do let us know how you get on. Meanwhile please use our Help facility to explore this and other opportunities.

5. Notes from our current thinking

It is impressive to see how the demand for motivation matters is increasing. In November there were 37,504 internet searches including “motivation”.

Please spread the word to your colleagues and suppliers. Everyone wants an efficient cost effective supply chain.

Try the keyword selector tool for your organisation by clicking the link. Note this links to a website outside of our control.

6. Our next Newsletter

We hope you enjoyed this Newsletter. Please forward it to anyone you feel would enjoy it. Please look at the information on our website for more details and articles.

The next Newsletter will be in January 2006. Look out for the details of new branding and our incredible events!

Season’s greetings and a Happy New Year

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