The story of the Panama Canal is nothing short of mind-blowing. How on earth did we accomplish such a feat over 100 years ago and how are the original locks still in operation today? At the beginning of the project, it’s said the top jobs in the canal zone were coffin maker and gravedigger. Once the American contingent took over from the French, things began to change. As with most times of stress, they often become a crucible where tremendous innovation takes place in a compressed period of time. One of these innovations stuck with me, and we’re using it at Livewire today.
The Panama Canal authority was having a hard time getting consistent production out of its steam shovel operators. Workers in similar conditions were sometimes outperforming each other 2 to 1. One of the managers decided to start publishing everyone’s output in the “Canal Record,” its daily newspaper. A curious thing started to happen almost immediately. Operators started ramping up their output in a bid to outshine their buddies. One such clipping boasts of Bucyrus No. 213 setting the record for a single shovel with 4009 cubic yards of material on March 5, 1910. Output began to skyrocket, and the rest is history.
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This simple move by a frustrated manager over a century ago has long remained with me and informed how I decide to incent behavioral changes. If you follow any human choice, the incentives are usually pretty easy to sort out. In the case of the Panama Canal, the incentive was ego and recognition. We’re all naturally competitive and don’t want to be outdone by anyone else. I see this during our Livewire’s all-hands meetings where our salespeople will rib each other when we show individual team member performance to the company. Richard Petty’s version is a little more to the point: “There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.”
Panama Canal and Petty energy drove me toward our latest attempt at aligning incentives to get the results we’re looking for while fostering a little friendly competition. We began an outbound calling effort in earnest a few months ago. Each Monday, our director of sales & business development, Zack Reichert, loads in fresh leads into our CRM and assigns them to individual sales team members. It’s early days, but we’re not seeing a quick uptake on reaching out to these opportunities. Instead of admonishing the team, Zack is putting together a dashboard where he’ll be able to show each person’s (including his own) response time. Without saying a word, Zack is going to model rapid response and hopefully, our sales team will get the message and follow suit.
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Will our plan work? I’m not sure, but I do understand a little about human nature and I wouldn’t want to be beaten to the punch by anyone.
What are you doing to measure hustle in your organization?
Stay frosty, and see you in the field.
