If You Want To Sing, Sing!

(VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION):

Hi, Blair here with MXM! I’ve started to reintroduce this concept of V.U.C.A. I’m going to really lean on this for a while, because Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity have always been there in our business but they are there now, much stronger than ever before with what’s happening coming out of this pandemic. The disruption, we’ll see how disrupted, of the fitness industry, the social unrest, V.U.C.A. is at an all time high in our lifetime. Much higher than the financial crisis. So how do you deliver your product promise, your customer experience, your member experience in a world of V.U.C.A. when people’s expectations are changing so quickly?

Ideally everybody would have read the book “Primed To Perform” and layed that groundwork in their operations...but they talk about what motivates people in their job. What motivates them to come to work. Basically it answers the question, "Why do you come to work"?

Then there are direct motivators and indirect motivators. Direct motivators are very positive. It’s called direct because it involves the very work that you do. For example, group fitness instructors come in and generally have the highest employee experience scores in most organizations. That’s because they are very excited about their work. They have a sense of play of work. They are instructing, it’s not unmoored from that work. Here is what I mean with that…play is not the break room with the shuffle board and the keg on tap….that would be placed separate from your work. In fact, you may be going there to get away from your work! So when you think about a sense of play, it’s that you are engaging everyone’s hearts and minds in a way that they get to use their intellect to problem solve, to help the member, to be creative in their role.

I’ve said before, to our staff, if you have to make an announcement on the PA system, we are not giving you a script, we’ll give you some salient points but if you want to sing, you go ahead and sing. In other words, we hired you because we think you are an individual that can add value, not an individual that we need to control. That’s what gives people a sense of play. That is the single most powerful direct motivator.

We’ll move on to the others but I would challenge you to put these principles into play in your organization, especially in this greatly increased VUCA world. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

We hope your reopening will be scorching! We hope ours is too. Until the next one, thanks!