For much of mid-February, the smell of grilled bankers hung over the nation’s capital.
Eight of the nine CEOs of banks that received TARP bailout money were testifying before the House Financial Services Committee. Among the complaints of the Committee were the enormous bonuses that executives have been getting even as their companies lose billions.
The bank executives countered that they have to compensate their key people lavishly or they’ll lose them. Money is essential to motivation, they said. And they say this with such complete conviction that it’s hard to believe they might be wrong.
But listeners to Marketplace on National Public Radio were treated to a different perspective when the show asked some working people in L.A. what inspires them to do a great job.
“It’s my passion for arts and beauty,” said a hairdresser. “I want to be the best, best shoeshine man there is,” said the owner of a shoeshine stand. “If you care for your customers, you want to do the best you can for them,” said a Starbucks barista.
Obviously none of these people would turn down a raise if it was offered to them. But when asked what motivates them to do a great job, unlike the CEOs, money was not the first thing knocking on the back of their teeth.
David Lazarus of the L.A. Times noted that “Ordinary working stiffs seem to say, ‘I’m gonna do my job. Yes, of course I want to be paid well for it, but I take pride in what I’m doing.’ Whereas you look at the Wall Street culture, and it’s not the fault of the workers themselves, but the idea there seems to be that no good effort should go unrewarded – and it should go rewarded as lavishly as possible.”
So what’s the difference between these front-line folks and the CEOs? I think it has everything to do with how they spend their work days – specifically, how far they are from the customers.
For too many CEOs, customer service is a number, a score, something to be pushed higher to increase profits and productivity. But customer service isn’t an abstraction to the hairdresser, the shoeshiner, and the barista. Why? Because their days are actually spent serving customers. They know firsthand and in real time whether their companies are succeeding in making people’s lives better.
As a result, employee motivation and workplace satisfaction are measured and felt in very different terms on the front lines than two or three or ten steps away from the action.
The solution? These CEOs have GOT to get out of their offices.
I don’t just mean the occasional back-slapping tour through the Accounting Department—although that’s a good thing as well. CEOs need to put themselves in the teller window or on the cash register once in a while. They need to get into the lobby and chat up the flesh-and-blood customers whose lives are affected, for better or worse, by the actions and policies of the company.
CEOs who get out among the customers on a regular basis are much less likely to think that pay, and pay, and more pay, is what employee motivation is all about.