Some people are happy performing the routine day-to-day things in life, including routine work. Other people yearn for more variety in their work.
The people who yearn for more variety tend to talk about their desires. The people who are satisfied with the status tend to talk less. When desires are communicated, each type of person tends to discount or shrug off the desires of the other.
People who are happy performing routine day-to-day work tend to resist change and oppose innovation. People who seek more variety tend to be curious and inventive. When ideas are discussed, each type of person has difficulty understanding the views of the other.
And worse, these opposing views about the value of routine and not-routine work often generate never-ending problems. These problems can cause businesses to sputter, stall, and become entrenched in poor performance.
Perhaps, these fundamental differences are responsible for most business failures?
Certainly, these fundamental differences are the root cause of many interpersonal clashes. Interpersonal clashes eat up energy, demotivate, and in some cases lead to business failures.
About eating up energy…
People energize one another. One good example is the thing we call team spirit. Team spirit exists when people are like-minded and share a drive to succeed. When team spirit is present, ‘mutual-motivation’ leads to harmonious thought and action, which cause positive momentum to build and teams to do better.
People eat up one another’s energy. Examples range from co-workers who visit with interruptions to discourteous sales clerks to road rage. People are prone to mirror other’s behaviour: road rage is contagious. People are prone to react negatively when others behave negatively: fight and flight reactions are part of our genetic make-up.
We have 2 choices:
- We can eat up one another’s energy…leaving insufficient energy to do productive work.
- We can energize one another…building energy to expand productive work.
The choice is clear.
People need to understand their differences. People need to communicate about their differences. People need to buy into shared goals.
People need to help one another satisfy different needs.
Using better communication, people need to figure out ways to accomplish both routine and not-routine work.