My approach to motivation and engagement is based on this meme of how things really work in most organizations (both images, old and new):

 

Square Wheels metaphor for organizational improvement

Nothing fancy or earth-shattering, just people working to move their wagon forward, with a few possibilities for improvement…

We have:

  • isolated Leadership
  • uninformed or un-aligned workers
  • inefficient processes that do not work smoothly
  • poor or difficult communications, and
  • round wheels that already exist in the wagon that could be implemented to make things work more better faster.

and literally dozens of other key learning points about how people process and react to information.

We have been playing with this theme and different illustrations about how things really work as a way of involving and engaging managers and workers in the process of continuous continuous improvement, that the process of stepping back from the wagon serves many purposes. People have ideas and implementing those ideas improves how things work along with engagement. Leadership does get isolated from the hands-on reality and communications is an important factor in every workplace.

My friend in India, Shantanu Chakravorty, emailed me this picture, with no context and no explanation, heck not even a source. And looking at it for a couple of minutes gave me all sorts of ideas and inspirations and questions and comments.

Working Hard from Within the WagonWhat do YOU think is happening here?

This WILL take a minute or two to register and for some different alternatives to come to mind. Who is that guy in the bed of the truck and what is he actually accomplishing? Bunches of possibilities, but my thought is that this kind of thing happens very often in nearly every workplace!

poster-reality-round-already-in

For some extra thinking, spend 40 seconds looking at this animation and then spend another 2 minutes thinking about all the possibilities:

 

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott SimmermanDr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

 

 

 

Also published on Medium.