The Business Environment: Motivation, Rewards & Incentives
Dan Pink, worldwide renown author, demystifies motivational mechanisms and the way rewards are regarded as a key leverage in driving performance, in a classic TED Talk.
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Dan Pink, worldwide renown author, demystifies motivational mechanisms and the way rewards are regarded as a key leverage in driving performance, in a classic TED Talk.
For Rockwater Energy Solutions, the 1980s represented a rough time, with cutthroat competitors wanting to gain an edge on one side and them struggling to reach the finish line among the first, on the other. Nevertheless, despite, or maybe due to this difficult period, Rockwater was able to outgrow its beginnings as a small, low-tech deep-sea repair and construction diving company.
By 1993, Rockwater Energy Solutions, a Brown & Root/Halliburton subsidiary, was a global leader in underwater engineering and construction.
However, before reaching worldwide success, the company had to first face a new competitive landscape, in which the leading oil companies decided that it was more profitable to establish long term partnerships with their suppliers, instead of choosing them based on low-price competition. Because of these new expectations Rockwater needed to shift their focus towards building closer relationships with their customers, and towards strengthening customer relationships.
They decided to use a Balanced Scorecard, so that they could translate their strategy into definite goals and actions. The company’s senior management team developed a new vision statement that placed emphasis on customer relationships:
“As our customers’ preferred provider, we shall be the industry leader in providing the highest standards of safety and quality to our clients.”
They also developed five strategic elements to support this vision:
These five elements were then developed into four different perspectives:
Rockwater’s senior management team adapted each perspective to the company’s profile, thus forming the Rockwater Balanced Scorecard set of performance measures.
These three measurements revealed Rockwater’s intentions to predict and manage longer-term performance.
This approach took into consideration both the necessity of staying cost-competitive, and the need to deliver value to those customers who were looking for a more stable relationship.
If in the beginning, the company placed more importance on performance for each functional department, now the new focus revealed a shift towards measures that integrated key business processes.
By refining the metrics used for the identification stage, the management team acknowledged their wish to have a metric that would make all members of the organization understand the importance of building relationships with and satisfying customers.
To be successful in these two areas, Rockwater realized that they needed empowered and motivated employees. A staff survey was conducted, which measured attitudes, along with metrics that tracked the number of employee-submitted suggestions; on top of this, they also made use of a revenue-per-employee measurement, which quantified the outcomes of employee commitment and training programs.
Ultimately, the Balanced Scorecard has not only helped Rockwater Energy Solutions acknowledge the importance of customer feedback metrics, but it has also transformed the company into a high-value, service and results-driven organization, which caters both to long-term customers, as well as to the short-term, price-concerned ones.
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Executives know that discontinuity exists at all levels of production and they do not want to find themselves caught off guard and becoming obsolete. In order to improve performance, executives realize that they have to quickly create and share new ideas, as well as develop better knowledge management processes, in order to be more responsive to market changes.
Diversity is becoming one of the most important priorities across almost every industry, but there are still quite a lot of HR professionals who are biased when hiring new employees. Many of them are unconsciously biased, but that certainly doesn’t justify hiring people based on personal dislikes and unfair prejudices.
Most would agree that a well-planned business strategy is necessary for an organization to achieve desired business results. Business leaders in the highest-performing companies understand that, and while a detailed business strategy is necessary for successful organizational performance, it is not sufficient.
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