Let’s talk about how giving your team clarity and motivation with incentives can fuel your world-changing transformation. I’ve seen three no-frills steps create effective incentive plans, and I’ll go into detail on those today.
Why incentives?
When embarking on ambitious change, it’s tricky to articulate a clear path forward while emerging and complex forces are shaping the terrain in near real-time. On slick treads, your team will struggle to gain traction on the new terrain. And even worse, their lack of a clearcut path and traction will push your vehicle for transformation off course.
Reach out for an advisory call now
Imagine, though, looking from where you’re situated today and seeing a well-worn path cut through the rugged terrain you must cross. Having a clear line of sight, you can see all the way to your destination, the glimmering transformation you envision.
Your team needs to have that line of sight. A solution I’ve seen work on teams small and large, local and global, is using smart incentives. Here’s how:
Spark the fire, then fuel the flame
Validate your transformation before incenting your team to blaze the trail. Begin by leveraging existing incentives to fuel low-cost, low-resource efforts that demonstrate the benefit of your change. These preliminary steps attract more resources to your change. They ensure calibration toward true north, and a viable path to get there. Once achieved, you’re ready to add more fuel to the fire and heat up the transformation.
Make it inclusive and equitable
Include everyone trudging through this journey of transformation in your incentive plan. It’s the right thing to do, and it ensures your whole team is united in leaving basecamp, and that you don’t face any ethical or legal obstacles along the way. Keeping the caravan together disallows stratifying incentives between titles or departments. Provide equitable opportunities to contribute, and apply the same rules to all.
Keep the incentive hitched to the goal
The ultimate determinant for distributing the incentive must be reaching the final destination. Staying on course with this principle might be the most difficult because virtuous efforts sometimes lead us astray. People are people. Failures happen, and here’s the human truth of the matter: failures are more likely when teams know they will be rewarded even when they don’t reach the destination. Do not implement an incentive out if it can’t be withheld.
Incentives will take your transformation from a simmer to an all-out blaze. Just make sure you are on the right path, equitably incent everyone on the journey, and hold your goal as the ultimate destination. Reach out to us at NCXT to talk about fueling your next transformation.