… A SENSE OF URGENCY! 

Whether they’re trying to make the winning score, put out the morning edition, meet the tax deadline, or absolutely, positively get it there overnight, these workers know it’s ‘now or never’. But not all businesses operate with built-in deadline pressures.

• Pinpoint causes of complacency.  Before you can light a fire under your employees, you’ll need to discover what’s been dampening their enthusiasm.Are they burned out from overwork, frustrated by heavy-handed bureaucracy, confused about their mission? Meet with employees to discuss what’s making them sluggish, then devise strategies for addressing those issues.
• Find opportunities to set deadlines.  In an ideal world, employees would be inherently motivated to quickly achieve their goals.

But, in the real world, most people never do today what they can put off until tomorrow.That’s where deadlines come in.

Deadlines create accountability, forcing people to follow through on commitments. But imposing deadlines on, say, how long retail workers should spend helping customers can backfire by encouraging poor service.

That’s why you need to be creative. For instance, you could set a deadline for how long workers can try to resolve customer issues before handing off the problem to a supervisor.

Such deadlines would encourage —and empower —workers to do everything possible to quickly and effectively resolve customer problems.

• Reward desirable behaviours.  Once you’ve adopted a deadline-oriented approach, monitor progress to make sure your strategy is having the desired effect.

Promote buy-in by recognising and rewarding the workers who embrace the need to act with urgency.