Moving from a Person-Centred View of Achievement to a Process-Centred View of Achievement

We all talk about wanting to do things, searching for excellence, searching for success... in other words, we want to achieve. But the extent of achievement, really depends on how badly we want it. Thus, our NEED for achievement plays a very important role in making our efforts successful.

Being an entrepreneur, I have always been fascinated by what motivates entrepreneurs... especially, the role of achievement motivation for developing entrepreneurship in an economy and the question - How to develop achievement motivation in an individual, in a group and in a community?

David C. McClelland, a well-known Behavioural scientist of USA held the view that achievement motivation can be developed through training and experience. For this, McClelland conducted his experiments with groups of businessmen in three countries, i.e. Malawi, India, and Ecuador. He carried out a separate full-fledged training programme in India to instil achievement motivation in the minds of entrepreneurs. His successful experiment is popularly known as “Kakinada Experiment”.

Very recently, I had an opportunity to learn about his work from Mr. Surya Mani Singh - an OD practitioner, Facilitator, Member of ISABS and someone who has worked and created a fair amount of magic with achievement motivation, based on the findings by McLelland and other giants such as Maslow.

One of the things that I really took away was the Process-centred view of Achievement and not just a People-centred view.

What I mean by this is, most organizational performance management systems revere and celebrate high achievers. But there is never enough conversation and dialogue around, what was their process? Let me explain thus: If someone worships Sachin Tendulkar or MS Dhoni, they might feel very motivated; but their own achievement will only happen, if they focus on the processes that these two Gods of Cricket adopted - e.g., humility, grit, beginner's mindset, practice, discipline, etc.

Then should we not revere also, these qualities, these processes and create conversations and dialogues around them?

I am imagining a performance management cycle where, of course, the top performers get their incentives, salary hikes, promotions etc. But the cycle doesn’t stop there… the top achievers are interviewed and reflect on what was their intrapersonal process that helped them to achieve … was it discipline, was it tolerance of ambiguity, was it their devotion to their learning, did they collaborate … in other words, what did they do, to achieve what they achieved.

A lot of these words do exist in the organization’s vocabulary, but largely, only academically. Value statements, posters on the wall, talk about the qualities that an employee must have, but the worship is reserved for the individual and not for the qualities.

But if we worship, revere, create rituals (using existing organizational learning infrastructure such as skilling platforms, employee engagement platforms) that amplify these qualities leading to achievement – I wonder what might emerge.

And of course, we have a lot to learn from nature, when it comes to intrapersonal processes leading to achievement.

Picture Credit: BBC Wildlife Magazine

Scientists filmed male Southern Masked Weaver birds in Botswana as they built multiple nests out of grass during a breeding season. Their findings contrast with the commonly-held assumption among scientists that nest-building is an innate ability. The researchers found that individual birds varied their technique from one nest to the next. They also saw that some birds build their nests from left to right, and others from right to left. The male birds also “visited” other nests – learning from each other’s techniques and experience, learning and grit were a few qualities that were demonstrated by those birds that built award-winning nests – the award of course, being the approval of that special someone – the female weaver bird.