Harnessing individual decision-making and motivation is key to improving workflow across teams

Motivation and Workflow

As Saragossa continues its growth journey, we have been looking at how to establish best practices around consistent workflow when various teams are working in different cities, countries and time zones.

We are developing a playbook around Saragossa’s Principles of Motivation to provide a framework and foundation to aid us when building this approach. 

Our starting point for developing this playbook was looking at the characteristics of our highest performers and identifying that they were driven and guided by the following traits:

Competitiveness – a built-in desire to achieve greater results than the competition

Ownership – The characteristic of committing to owning the solution to a problem, carrying the can and taking responsibility for fixing the problem because doing so makes them feel good.

Process adherence – Recognising and adhering to a well-defined process, gaining a sense of accomplishment by ticking off micro steps to achieve a goal – gaining motivation by seeing incremental steps to your destination.

Fear – We try and avoid this as much as we can because we try and create a culture underpinned by positivity. Still, the concern about the impact of missing deadlines or not completing tasks sometimes is a powerful factor in people innovating solutions or attempting things that maybe they didn’t think were doable.
For example, fear was a critical factor in Saragossa’s Director Jimmy’s early career success, and at the start-up stages in the firms he founded.

While some businesses might have better approaches, this has provided a positive solution that works for us. Continuing to build our culture so that motivation remains a crucial driver for people is a big priority during this period of growth. 

The company is kept alive by teams continuing to better themselves, challenge each other, ask questions, make mistakes and keep learning.