Responsive and Responsible Motivation: Overcoming the Whac-A-Mole Approach to Performance Improvement

Abstract

WHEN AARON FECHTER in 1976 invented the game Whac-A-Mole, he probably did not realize that he was also portraying the basic model of organizational performance improvement, including motivation: You whack one mole at a time, and another randomly pops up.Let us explain this model. In our organizations we usually try to fix individual problems one at a time. That means we conceptually break the organization into splinters, pieces, hunks, or stovepipes.For example, if we see a performance problem in production, we initiate a process to find the cause of that particular problem and fix it. In other words, we whack that individual performance mole. And before long, another mole pops up and then we use our conventional technology to fix that. And then another. And another. By looking at individual performance problems, including our associated motivational schemes, in isolation from each other and apart from the total system's contribution to external clients and our shared society, we are playing Whac-A-Mole. We reward something other than what allows the organization to add value to its immediate external clients and our shared world (Addison & Haig, 2012 ; Kaufman, 2006Kaufman, , 2011. Thus, it is whacking individual moles that gets rewarded, not efforts aimed at the common good.On the ill-fated Titanic , training was apparently chosen to meet the limited performance criteria for rearranging the deck chairs, just as it did with other jobs on the ship. This approach likely earned each manager a desired reward. Nevertheless, all of these individual performance improvements did not result in the ship's being steered safely through icebergs. In the process of fixing individual problems, the larger issues of safety and survival were overlooked.Similarly, when affordable housing was the solution of the day , salespersons were rewarded to sign up as many mortgage loans as possible. Because the sales incentives were tied to the number of sales closed and not to the quality of the loans, including questions as to whether the home buyers could ever pay back the loans, many It is conventional to start performance improvement with analysis (i.e., breaking something down into its components and determining how each part works with the others). This is counterproductive. Once you attempt to unscramble something, it is almost impossible to relate the fragments to their original purpose and their usefulness to the organization. And once those unifying links are broken, attempts to improve the organization, including pinpointing appropriate motivational incentives, may become compromised. That causes trouble in defining and delivering useful performance. This article deals with that as a problem. It examines how conventional motivation schemes encourage fragmentation, seeks to explain what causes that fragmentation, and suggests some remedies. We have to overcome the conventional wisdom about performance improvement. H. L. Mencken was right when he said, "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." 10 ww...

HRD Interventions that Offer a Solution to Work-Life Conflict

“…When looking to respond to lagging performance indicators, the Whac-A-Mole approach is often used but as the name in the performance improvement (PI) literature suggests, only a single, random problem is answered without analyzing the overall systemic nature of organizational problems (Kaufman, 2015; Morris et al, 2009). Given the new world of work, a parent working in their home still has job duties as an employee.…”