Most managers and executives have a common goal: they want their organizations to do what they do better. Whether it's sales, service, admin, manufacturing, or any business function it's pretty universally true. Given that, we invest in training, contests, and incentives to motivate our people to learn and try new and better ways of doing things. Okay so far. The "rub" however is that it, sort of, doesn't work.

I spent many years as a sales manager and just about as many as a sales training manager. The painful truth that I learned, and that every experienced manager knows, is that our efforts to motivate people to improve all too often fall on deaf ears no matter what we do. The people who regularly work to improve their skills or knowledge would have done it on their own, with or without extra motivation; and the people who didn't want to make the effort to begin with, didn't change. I've spent years trying to understand why.

I think that it comes down to Comfort. I've started assessing organizations by dividing their people into two groups: the comfortable and the uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable employees are fundamentally dissatisfied. Perhaps they believe they're not making enough money, they want recognition or a promotion, or just don't like the status quo in their job or even how the company is doing things. They might feel they don't get enough attention or opportunities to shine. They might be viewed as complainers and difficult to deal with. If they're doing well it's not enough; if they're not doing well they want it fixed.

Comfortable employees are "good employees": they're solid, they like the status quo, and they don't mind working hard. They see themselves a good team members, not "boat rockers". They know how to do their job and want to keep doing it. Comfortable employees like to stay that way and tend to resist or avoid changes - after all, change might be a good idea, but what if it's a worse idea?

So which set of employees would you want? (Gee, I hope you didn't answer "comfortable".)

As I said to one sales manager (only slightly tongue-in-cheek), "If you want to create change you better surround yourself with people who want change. You need more employees who are a royal pain to manage, who will constantly complain, and who will want more, more, more all the time. If you're lucky they will come to work unhappy and stay that way no matter how successful their day is. They'll challenge you on every decision so you'll always have to have your act together. But when you train them they'll get it , when you motivate them they'll do it, and when you lead them they'll follow." Hey, nobody said management was supposed to be fun ...

-----------------------------------------------

Tim McMahon is CEO of CATALYST Performance Learning and is a global sales and management speaker, trainer, and author. Visit Tim at www.catalyst2performance.com.