Even the ants work more cooperatively. Why aren't your employees creating results?

Three Misconceptions About Teams That Leaders and Entrepreneurs Need to Rethink

When we create a business, we imagine it in a rather idealized way. For example, we assume that all employees work harmoniously, like ants building an anthill. Or like bees – a hive. We imagine that everyone knows their role in the company, what results they should bring. And the efforts of each employee merge into some kind of single miracle flow, which increases revenue from month to month.

And at the same time, there is no confusion. No one tries to shift responsibility to others or shirk their task. There is only a clear mechanism where one person harmoniously complements the other.

However, it often turns out that for many managers such a scenario is visible only on the pages of books on management. They describe the amazing culture of Netflix or turquoise in VkusVill. Reading these examples and being inspired by the results they give, I really want to adopt them and implement them in my company.

But as soon as an entrepreneur closes the book and returns to the realities of his project, he is faced with constant obstacles. Employees perform tasks carelessly, as if they don’t really need it. They don’t understand priorities, complicate simple tasks and play ping-pong with responsibility instead of the ball. To keep the team on track, the manager spends a lot of energy and time. “Is everyone’s business really like this? Does everyone really live like this?

At this moment, everything around begins to hint: no, not everyone lives like this. On time, an advertisement appears in the format “I quit the operating system and now I will teach you too.” Some people buy into the magic pill, some avoid it, and some actually manage to “get out.” But in the end, for many, the company still does not start to work coherently. At least until the entrepreneur changes his attitude to what is happening in business.

Well, let’s understand the misconceptions that prevent many people from setting up their team’s work.

You have to put pressure on employees, otherwise they don’t work

One of the main symptoms that makes an entrepreneur think that things are going dubiously is that employees perform tasks through force and, as it were, “carelessly.” At such moments, managers often tighten their grip even more, micromanagement and other dubious things begin. As a result, a bleak picture emerges: everyone seems to be working, tasks are somehow being completed, but the atmosphere is more reminiscent of hard labor rather than the turquoise company they wrote about in books.

To spur employees on, you have to use a stick in the form of strict deadlines, control and motivation systems. Squeeze the result by force, as if from an unwanted slave. But the team’s results do not begin to grow at this moment (which is not surprising). There is no enthusiasm, engagement drops or at best remains low.

Okay, but how to proceed then? Change the motivation system? Raise salaries? How else can you get people to work with more enthusiasm?

To understand, we suggest looking into the very essence of human nature. In Drive, Daniel Pink argues, based on extensive research, that true human motivation is based on three elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. External incentives, monetary coercion, or punishment are ineffective for complex tasks that require creativity and conceptual thinking.

To put it simply, we were created not for blind obedience to some boss, but for self-realization. This is the instinct that drives us – the desire to make choices of our own free will, and not under coercion.

Remember a child who is asked to clean his room – he will resist as best he can. But if you use a trick and offer him a game of “who can fill the basket with toys the fastest,” then he is more likely to immerse himself in it, sparing no effort. The same logic applies in adulthood. Employees enthusiastically take on projects and tasks that are close to their personal interests and values. But following instructions if they don’t see the point in them is hard labor.

A design team can happily work on the corporate identity for a prestigious brand. But at the same time, it is trivial to ignore routine layout edits for unimportant (in their estimation) orders.

Copywriters are more enthusiastic about working on a project with an interesting brand that they like. But writing primitive advertisements using boring templates for cards on Wildburys is torture, which is easier to hand over to AI.

To summarize all of the above, pressure on employees will not correct the systemic problem of “emptiness in the eyes and careless work.” It arises due to the lack of a motivation system (and it’s not about money) that takes into account the interests and goals of each employee.

If you are in a situation where you have to put pressure on employees to work, work with the system and answer yourself honestly: does it take into account the interests and motivation of each team member? Are the personal goals and interests of employees in the same vector as the company’s goals or in the opposite direction?

The team does not understand the depth of tasks and priorities

Another common problem for managers is that the team does not understand the essence of the work, does not understand what is important for the project, and what has little effect, is not a priority and can be “skipped.”

Even when all the tasks are scheduled, priorities are set, strategic plans and vision are brought down to line employees, the performers manage to complicate everything, come up with ad-libs and follow the wrong course, like blind kittens.

If you take an IT company, then it might look like this. The development team constantly questions the requirements for new functionality from the customer. They begin to fantasize about how everything can be done differently, complicating basic tasks with unnecessary architecture where it is not required. And the project manager has to painfully convince and return everyone to the customer’s original task.

This situation can only go downhill at first. But time will pass, and it will not disappear, but will begin to itch even more. Like a annoying fly in the early morning. Sooner or later, managers come to the conclusion that something needs to be done about this. Is it really necessary to additionally train people to better understand tasks and set priorities? Or is that not the case?

In fact, the root of this problem is often a lack of accountability among employees. Not nominal, but real responsibility. And here we turn to the literature:

Теория самодетерминации (Self-Determination Theory) Эдварда Л. Деси и Ричарда М. Райана гласит, что одна из трех врожденных психологических потребностей человека - это потребность в автономии, т.е. ощущении себя источником собственных действий. Когда людям предоставляется автономия и ответственность, это повышает их внутреннюю мотивацию и вовлеченность.

Now in simple language. When people do not feel like they are masters of the process, they work according to the principle “you are the boss, I am the fool.” They follow instructions formally, without delving into the context. They have no particular interest in predicting the consequences of their actions. After all, in case of a mistake or failure, it will not be them who will have to answer.

The team begins to delve into the details and subtleties of the work only when it takes responsibility for the overall (or personal) result. When everyone realizes their role and influence on the final goal. In such a situation, people themselves are interested in the nuances, because their internal feeling of victory or defeat directly depends on their actions.

Therefore, if the team does not understand the depth of tasks and priorities, it is worth delving not into the employees themselves, but to look for something that cultivates a superficial approach and formalism in work. Most often this is due to the fact that people do not have real (rather than nominal) personal responsibility for the result.

The employee does not work for the benefit of the company, acts only in his own interests

Another common way to rationalize one's own management failures is to believe that employees have no interest in the overall good of the company. “Instead of taking on and solving problems, they constantly bombard you with questions, look for flaws, and offer to redo everything,” an entrepreneur can advocate.

For example, the marketing department receives a briefing to conduct an advertising campaign to launch a new “some cool product.” And then it begins. Instead of taking concrete steps to implement the campaign, employees are showing inexplicable resistance. They begin to doubt the initial data – is it worth doing this at all, and is the idea sufficiently developed, and let's throw it into the backlog for next year?

And how can one not ask the question: “Do people really want to work in this company and on its projects?” It seems that if they wanted to, they would offer ideas rather than look for problems. And if so, then the employees are definitely not interested in the success of the company and are pursuing only personal goals: to work less, earn more.

And here it’s worth asking yourself another question: why should people even put the interests of the company above their own?

We need to honestly admit to ourselves that people, by definition, work based on their own interests and values. If we return to the same theory of self-determination, which was already mentioned earlier, then one of the basic psychological needs of a person is the need for autonomy, i.e. the ability to independently determine their activities. When people feel that their activities are consistent with their inner interests and values, their intrinsic motivation increases.

We tend to devote ourselves completely to those matters that we feel are personal and close to us in spirit. And vice versa – we try to evade tasks imposed from outside that seem alien to us. Even our brains often become dull when we sit down to do these tasks.

Take, for example, a person who, in his free time from work, works on his own project, which does not yet bring in money. And when at work he is assigned a project to modify code for a client’s project, in which he does not see much sense, then he no longer has much enthusiasm. I would like to quickly finish my work task and switch to my project.

When the company's management gives instructions to the team from above, without taking into account the personal interests and values ​​of the performers, an inevitable value contradiction arises. You shouldn’t be surprised that a person will only imitate work, because it’s hard to work on something that is alien and not in tune with internal motivation.

If the thought “an employee does not work for the benefit of the company, acts only in his own interests” is in your head, the solution lies in the sphere of coordinating these same interests on both sides. People work in their own interests and love those things that are in their interests. Therefore, it is worth “matching” the interests of the company with the interests of the employees.

Perhaps with all this material we wanted to emphasize the key idea:

Most often, managers think that team work is out of sync with employees. But often this is not the case. The reason is in the management environment that the manager creates. And in how and what kind of people he recruits for the team.

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