Dave Burns

If people are disinterested, it's often because they don't resonate with the company's mission, and they aren't doing work that engages them or that they feel makes an impact. However, sometimes it's due to something else. It's important to communicate frequently with your people to ensure that everything's okay, support them where needed, and help them to find/do work that gets them closer to their personal goals while also contributing to business goals. It's also important to reward people properly with support, feedback, praise, promotion, compensation, and incentives. They need to feel that they're a complete part of the larger mission - both in contributions and in rewards.

If a strategy could be put in place and never adjusted, there wouldn't be much need for leaders after their people are trained up. Unfortunately, things change quickly and a business strategy requires constant maintenance. Staying agile by communicating frequently, creating reconfigurable operational building blocks (ie: job roles, org structures, processes, tools, etc.) that can be adjusted quickly, when needed, and continually promoting education and innovation will keep your organization ready for whatever comes its way. Leaders must continually be assessing outcomes and making adjustments where necessary to achieve the intended results. They should encourage their people to do the same at a more micro-level.

Inadequate communication is probably the most common source of misunderstanding, misalignment, missed targets, and even poor morale within an organization. You can't expect people to do things if you haven't communicated the goals, expectations, and information they need in order to do so. The method of communication is equally important. It needs to give the right people the right information at the right time with out interfering with their work and without them needing to search for it. You can't use email and/or meetings for everything. They're both too time consuming and cumbersome. An intentional combination of email, slack/teams, CRM & PM tools like HubSpot/JIRA/Asana/etc., and meetings will be more effective and less intrusive.

One of the strategies I find most freeing for a leader is to create a culture of cascading delegation, in which operational work is pushed down to the lowest level possible, combined with fostering autonomy. The way to do this is to focus on intentional organizational structure, strong hires, and employee development. Motivate people to do their best work in support of business objectives by giving them responsibilities that also enables them to gain experience in support of their personal career goals. Incentivize focus and resiliency with an incentive structure that rewards people for the right behaviors and results. This will create autonomy, accountability, and alignment within the operational team - freeing up leadership.

People do what they're incentivized to do. Motivate them by speaking to their personal values and goals. Create a monetary incentive plan that ties to team performance in achieving goals (or other types of non-monetary incentives). Encourage, recognize, reward - and track everything along the way to stay on course.

People do what they're incentivized to do and what interests them. Show them how the goals fit into their (and the business's) values. Ask them what their personal career goals are, show them how the work they do towards the company's goal will help them make progress towards their personal goals. Give them opportunities to work in ways that also move them towards their personal goals - such as doing different types of work or leading small projects that will help them build skills, experience, and knowledge they'll need to achieve their personal career goals.