Last week I attended the MOR IT Leadership Conference in Chicago as a means to refresh my leadership batteries, and it was quite effective at doing so. The first effect is that it reminded me why I used to write here, and I have to admit to making a horrible mistake in getting out of the practice of writing. I'll endeavor to not do that again. Now let's get up on the balcony.

After volunteering to help Candice with peer coaching, I suggested we have a suggestion on leading, managing and doing. Balancing these three things is important for anyone but especially anyone wanting lead more rather than simply do more.

For some time, I have felt that my next job has to have two of three traits:

1. Strategic - includes strategic planning and vision for the organization, can be a unit of a larger organization but must still be strategic
2. Staff leadership and management - having a team of direct reports, no specific level
3. IT pro development - develops the non-technical skills - including leadership - of IT professionals primarily, but also their technical skills

Yes, it has been several months, but it is time to get back to blogging from time to time. This post's topic is putting yourself out there, a key component of small-l leadership.

In a large organization that lacks strong centralization like the University, there is a lot of opportunity for small-l leadership. In fact, there are many more opportunities than the official leadership opportunities at the University. The challenging part is finding the right opportunity and deciding to take the risk of putting yourself out there. I'll use myself as an example.

After Sally Jackson mentioned Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody", I thought it would be a book that hit upon my interests. It did that and more. There have been a lot of books about leadership, and there have been a lot of books about the changes that the Internet has brought to society. Shirky's book really took the analysis and the thinking to the next level by examining how people have organized without having an organization. Through the use of multiple examples, he illustrates how society has been changing. It is especially effective how he finds examples of people who organized without paradigm changing technology and how they organized after a new technology came into use.

Yesterday was the kick-off of the IT@Illinois project to envision the future of IT at the Urbana-Champaign campus of University of Illinois. Going into the day, we knew a little of what Sally Jackson, CIO of the campus, had in mind, but we did not know a significant amount of detail of what the Provost was thinking. We knew that the project of transforming IT on the Urbana-Champaign campus was going to be launched, but we did not know what that meant. What did we learn on the day of presentations?

Motivating yourself and the people who work with you can provide interesting challenges. There are a variety of ways that one thinks will motivate a person, but there are some concepts that seem to be against common sense. Motivation for purposes of this discussion is what drives people to go above and beyond the basics of the day-to-day. Motivation is what gets people excited about their work and strive to do things better.

When you think of how you might try to motivate someone, you probably think first about higher pay, a nice office, or extra time off. If you ask someone what they want from their job or a new career direction, these things are often mentioned as being part of what they want or hope to gain. The problem with these though is that they are not long-term motivating factors.

A study by Frederick Herzberg released in 1959 interviewed hundreds of accountants and engineers to find out when they felt exceptionally good about their jobs and when they felt exceptionally bad about their jobs. From the research, Herzberg put forth the Motivation-Hygiene theory of job satisfaction. Motivation and Hygiene are the two sides of motivating people to do their jobs well and to be happy.

Hygiene factors are things that do not motivate people by their presence but usually significantly decrease their motivation when lacking. These factors include pay, job security, supervision quality, and work space. A person who is paid well is not going to be motivated to perform at a high level for an extended period. An initial improvement in performance might occur, but the new pay level quickly becomes the new standard and no longer provides motivation. However, if a person believes they are underpaid, their level of motivation will definitely decrease. In this way a Hygiene factor that is lacking will cause a decrease in motivation.

The factors that actually increase motivation are appropriately called Motivation factors. The things that can increase an employee's motivation include a sense of achievement, recognition from supervisors and peers, opportunities for advancement, and possibilities for personal growth. Imagine you just completed a 6-month long project that is going to save your organization a lot of time and money, and the CEO, director, or whoever is in charge thanks you publicly or privately (this can depend on whether you are High I or High S) for the work you did and really appreciates the impact it will have. That would be a great moment, wouldn't it? What if you never were recognized for the effort you put forth or were always told that someone else had been given a promotion you were striving to gain? That would definitely impact your desire to put worth a better than "adequate" effort.

So as a manager and leader, what do you need to remember to motivate your people? First, you need to make sure all the basics are taken care of: good compensation, good work spaces, flexible company policies, and being connected with your people. If you fail at fulfilling these needs, you are going to decrease your group's motivation. Second, to increase their motivation, you want to make sure people are recognized for their work, to make sure they have opportunities to grow their skills and to grow their knowledge and experience while you make sure that you are providing stimulating work.

To read more about Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene theory, you can start at Wikipedia or NetMBA.