I would invite the readers to share any other ways of meeting the WIIFM for the team members, specific incidents or just about any other view-points.
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Klara Södra 1, 111 52 Stockholm
Contact us today - 98457 ACEPM (98457 22376)
Well, if this is the case, there is a good chance that the WIIFM for the team members is being ignored while assigning their roles and responsibilities. WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me and answering WIIFM is a wide practice in mature organizations to ensure that employees own the responsibilities that they take up.
Professionals work for many motives – money, designation (reputation), job satisfaction, a penchant for delivering results, networking, diving deep into technology, developing knowledge such as process knowledge & domain knowledge, growth in chosen career path etc. While an average expected salary level is common for everybody, additional incentives can be quite motivating for some but not for all. This additional incentive is what we mean by money as a factor of motivation. Other motivational factors are self-explanatory. While allocating roles and responsibilities, it helps if the project manager relates the role and responsibility to the career aspiration of the team member. That is, the question – ‘What’s In It For Me if I take up this role?’ has to be answered for the team member. If this is done, the team member is most likely to develop ownership of his role and is more likely to be happy to go the extra mile to deliver results. This insight may appear to be common sense; however, practicing it is quite tricky as it can backfire if not implemented cautiously. Therefore, analysing the tricky nature of WIIFM and illustrating simple ways of practicing it with real life examples is the purpose of this article.
If there is ownership, the team members would not wait for instructions and would travel the extra mile to deliver the results. On the contrary if the team member lacks ownership, s/he would develop a distance with his/her work and this would not only result in reduced productivity, but also in other consequences such as not being self-driven, not figuring out certain details by themselves etc. Therefore, it is important to ensure that team members own their work and not develop a distance with it. This is better illustrated with an experiment.
An interesting experiment that I have come across in team building exercises is as follows: A weighty object, typically a big stone is kept and a boundary strip is marked next to the stone. Workshop participants have to stand outside the boundary strip, lift the stone and hold it in air as long as they can. Depending on the weight of the stone, either many participants fail to lift the stone or even if they lift, they won’t be able to hold it for long. This happens because they are lifting the stone from a distance due to the boundary strip and it requires more energy to lift the stone from a distance. In the next step, the boundary strip is removed and participants are allowed to stand close to the stone and lift it. In this attempt, most will be able to lift the stone and hold it much longer than they could, during the first attempt. Moral of the experiment is that when there is a distance between the task and the performer, execution of the task becomes more tedious.
This physical illustration holds true in the emotional sphere also. If an employee doesn’t feel that the work that he is carrying out belongs to him, then he would find it tedious. It is because of this tediousness that quality suffers and it takes more time to deliver. WIIFM would come to the rescue here.
Dealing with WIIFM can be quite tricky as it can be counter-productive at times. When the team members’ aspirations are captured, it raises their expectation bar and if there is no attempt to fulfil the aspirations, it can lead to disheartenment and further lack of ownership. On the other hand meeting the aspirations as-is can also be quite challenging as it may infeasible, or unjustified or may be against company policy. Some may be expecting a fast promotion and may not yet deserve; giving them promotion raises the expectation bar of others and can be counter-productive on the others. Some may be expecting a salary increment that may be disproportionate to what they deserve and it may be over and above the company policies. So, meeting the aspirations as-is could also troublesome. Therefore, the best way out is to meet the aspirations in a judicious and balanced way. After capturing the aspirations of the team member, the project manager has to think about them honestly and try to meet the aspirations to the extent possible within the project context. Two anecdotes below illustrate simple and pragmatic ways in which WIIFM of team members have been fulfilled –
In the corporate world, it is not that a professional would always get what s/he wants and there would always be compromises. But, if handled carefully, this compromise would not leave them with distaste but would make them view positively what they have at hand. And the method used by the project managers in the above two cases is no rocket science and is instead simple, pragmatic and can be followed by most.
Bottom line is – it may not be possible to fulfil the aspirations of the team members in Toto, but listening to them with interest and honestly trying to meet the aspiration in whatever way possible within the limits goes a long way in increasing the involvement and ownership of the team members.
I would invite the readers to share any other ways of meeting the WIIFM for the team members, specific incidents or just about any other view-points.