If you struggle to motivate your milkers or are frustrated by your middle managers’ track record for solving problems, Drive written by Daniel Pink might be a book for you to consider reading. Drive compares the most common tactics used to motivate productivity, from those that evolved out of the Industrial Age (think factories and manufacturing lines) to those now needed in the Information Age (think iPads and the application of technology). While the book doesn’t have a single reference to dairy cows or milk production, I think its messages can be extrapolated to managing a dairy.
The author makes the case that many of the motivation tools used to get employees to produce more per hour or shrink costs per pound are outdated.
These were powerful when economies were driven by manufacturing, but now that they are driven ever more by services, these incentives or “carrots” are less likely to motivate.
Of course, the dairy business still shares much in common with manufacturing. One dairy producer recently reiterated to me that he had been called merely a “commodity processor.”
Regardless, I believe a dairy’s employees are increasingly asked to use technology to better service cows (the production units) and problem-solve the intricacies of safeguarding commodities (the inputs).
Old school: Carrots and sticks
The book’s author, Daniel Pink, writes:
“For as long as any of us can remember, we’ve configured our organizations and constructed our lives around [this] bedrock assumption: The way to improve performance is to reward the good and punish the bad.”
Pink argues that “carrots,” such as pay, bonuses, time off, working conditions and job security, are what Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist- turned-management-professor, dubbed extrinsic rewards or “hygiene factors.”
“Their absence created dissatisfaction but their presence didn’t lead to job satisfaction,” Pink writes.
“Sticks” then were used as the punishment of these hygiene factors – lower pay, less time off or the loss of employment. They were meant to hurt because taking them away created a known dissatisfaction.
Pink spends most of the book aiming to discover what the next level of true motivation is – what Herzberg described as “motivators” or “things like enjoyment of the work itself, genuine achievement and personal growth.”
Rewarding hygiene with hygiene
Consider how carrots, or hygiene factors, are used on dairies. Have you ever heard of milkers being paid a bonus for lower SCCs? It’s a common dairy practice. It’s not a bad idea according to how the book describes the use of this type of motivator.
Pink says psychology has proved that carrot rewards are good to “narrow our focus.”
“That’s helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution. They help us stare ahead and race faster,” Pink writes.
Many of the in-parlor solutions to lower SCCs are known, such as workers using gloves, properly teat dipping and avoiding cross-contamination of infected cattle.
Narrowing a milker’s attention to these details will likely improve milk quality. However, is paying a bonus based on SCCs wise for a mid-level manager, such as a milking shift manager or herdsman?
Pink argues that carrot motivators discourage problem-solving for problems with less clear solutions:
“For more right-brain undertakings, those that demand flexible problem-solving, inventiveness or conceptual understanding, contingent rewards can be dangerous. Rewarded subjects often have a harder time seeing the periphery and crafting original solutions.”
A milk quality bonus may be blinding your mid-level managers from thinking “outside the box.” For example, does your parlor manager consider milk quality may have stubbornly plateaued because of outside-the-parlor factors – cow hygiene, the management of cows in the dry pen, the oversight of health in the fresh pen, etc.?
Take pay ‘off the table’
Forward-thinking dairy producers who read Pink’s book will likely reconsider paying their mid-level managers what they’re worth, without using bonuses. Pink suggests this is the most effective use for a paycheck:
“The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.”
So if you don’t motivate a manager with contingent pay anymore, what do you use? According to Pink’s book, you give him or her freedom, development and then purpose, and in that order.
Pink argues that business owners should follow the lead of William McKnight, former president and chairman of 3M. His credo: “Hire good people and leave them alone.”
Pink writes: “What a few future-facing businesses are discovering is that one of these essential [motivation] features is autonomy – in particular, autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do, when they do it, how they do it and whom they do it with.”
Of course, if you don’t think you have a trustworthy, reliable and smart herdsman, this motivation philosophy won’t work.
The wrong herdsperson won’t check the close-up pen frequently enough, won’t come to work early enough, will manage from the office instead of being outside in the pen and will promote cronyism and nepotism when hiring employees. A truly good herd manager won’t do those things. They won’t need a short leash.
Maintaining this type of autonomous relationship requires great trust. Your manager may come to you and suggest firing a certain individual. Or he or she may come and ask for a new piece of equipment.
You’ll be faced with trusting their judgment. An autonomous manager with a long leash will, over time, prove that they’ll use it to become more productive and a better problem-solver.
Give them autonomy
Second, Pink suggests that a great employee who is offered autonomy will engage with his or her work and will seek after mastery or further professional development.
“The idea of management is built upon certain assumptions about the basic natures of those being managed.
It presumes that to take action or move forward, we need a prod – that absent a reward or punishment, we’d remain happily and inertly in place … But is that really our fundamental nature? When we enter the world, are we wired to be passive and inert? Or are we wired to be active and engaged?
I’m convinced it’s the latter – that our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed.”
In seminars with our readers, I’ve observed dairy workers, many of them Hispanic, say they value learning and development.
Getting better at their job motivates them, they say. And they’re not just giving lip service. It’s the reason many of them come to these educational opportunities on their own time and after a long work day.
A purpose-driven manager
For the autonomous employees that show this self-initiative and for one who is constantly improving, Pink suggests harnessing the highest form of non-monetary motivation – purpose.
“An equally powerful source of energy, one we’ve often neglected or dismissed as unrealistic, is what we might call the ‘purpose motive.’ Many entrepreneurs, executives, and investors are realizing that the best-performing companies stand for something and contribute to the world.”
in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. He is a purpose-driven manager.
I first met Quezada at one of our Hispanic labor seminars one cold December night outside of Milwaukee. He was a dairy manager and had driven nearly two hours after work to attend the meeting. (Recall the previous section about autonomy and the pursuit of mastery.) After the bilingual training, I asked him why he’d come.
Click here to watch a video of Juan Quezada explain why money isn’t the only motivation for driven Latino employees.
He said he wanted to be a mentor to other young dairy managers. Quezada told me he’d been working in the dairy industry for nearly three decades at that point. He didn’t want young managers to make the same mistakes he did. Mentoring was his purpose-driven motivation.
The next day Quezada invited me to visit his dairy. We received a tour. Then he told me how just a few days before he’d suggested to his boss he change the contract A.I. breeder who was inseminating the cows. It wasn’t an easy or popular suggestion. But Quezada said he wanted to be truthful.
He said his boss had given him decision-making authority over who could do the best job at breeding. (Recall the principle of autonomy.) He didn’t feel they were doing the best job. And while he didn’t want to hurt their feelings, saying the decision was nothing personal, he felt it was in the dairy’s best interest to change.
Since we first met, Quezada has been promoted to pursue a task valuable to the dairy and one that Quezada feels passionate about – safety and training.
What’s better compensation than doing something you’re passionate about?
I recognize that not every employee is going to be like Quezada. But when you identify those who are, a read of Drive might ensure you maximize their potential. PD
Walt Cooley
Editor
Progressive Dairyman
