Going to work in the morning is related with happiness or at least a state of acceptance next to your job. You work 8 to 10 hours a day, you get paid, and then you get back to your life.

In the same time, job satisfaction is a necessary evil. Your existence is conditioned by the needs that you have and also the needs of those for which you are a provider. No matter how much we get, we want more. Is what drives us forward, being in the same time the root of our unhappiness.

No matter how much the organization does, in the end job satisfaction is a choice, an acceptance of your responsibilities with a reward that influences not if you go to work, but if you go to work at the same company next month.

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According to John Meyer and Natalie Allen there are three different types of organizational commitment:

Affective commitment is based on positive emotions. The employee is identifying with the organization. He also identifies with a good financial compensation, job satisfaction.

Continuance commitment is when you have no other choice but to stay. Leaving the company involves economic costs and social costs based. This type we are going to see more often these days.

Usually continuance organizational commitment was determined by being in the same company for years. Because people developed competencies that could be applied to new positions they started to move more often. Talented people were scarce. Now, with the “crisis”, jobs are scarce. Only for now …

Normative commitment is based on what you feel is right. You perceive as having an obligation and you stay with the organization because is the right thing to do. Loyalty is never overrated … is only underpaid.

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A team does not have what is called “group thinking”. A team does not a leader as in somebody to lead. A team needs a manager that is, most of all, a facilitator with a small component of leadership.

Organizational behavior looks at a team as a group of people that interact with the sole purpose of achieving the goals of the organization. They are formal, as establish by the organization, or informal, as a response to the needs of the organization and the interest of the members.

Bruce Tuckman has defined 5 stages in the development of a team:

1. Formation of the team (Forming) – this is the first date stage but with a sense of purpose. The members have questions about each other and not too much about the project itself. The purpose is present as a feeling that interdependence exists between them.
2. Confrontation stage (Storming) – this is the stage in which roles are defined. It is also the period where people that understand the win-win concept define alliances and people that are territorial are showing their claws in an attempt of clever positioning.
3. Consensus building (Norming) – this is the acceptance stage. People accept that they rely on each other; the general rules (norms) are adopted.
4. Execution (Performing) – tasks are accomplished, the facilitator facilitates.
5. Closure (Adjourning) – this stage is the one where lessons learned are documented, and people take emotional based decisions about being in touch after.

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For an employee the company is supposed to be a family, a place in which you feel good, this being the main motivation and not the money. How about we treat this as a business for both sides? It is always about money. If next to money comes a pleasant social interaction and higher purposes … is fine.

When you negotiate your salary, the employer will try to pay you the smallest amount possible. The funny part is that if you tell the interviewer that you are there for the money, they will put you at the end of the list. So you lie and the carousel starts: they will think they tricked you and expect performance, you will be unsatisfied and will do work in … the smallest amount possible.
Everybody loses.

It should be a fair trade. You give your time and your competencies and you ask in return what you need and not what is offered.

Remember: You are part of the negotiation process and not the subject of negotiation. Personal branding should become your favorite jacket. The more you know about yourself, the more conscious you become of your value on the labor market.

Everything that is said about organizational behavior must respect the fair trade principles.

• Transparency and accountability
• Payment of fair price
• Gender equity
• Decent work environment
• Trade relations

We are so used to having freedom of speech but we do not care about our freedom to act. No matter the country, although the employer asks more work and dedication from you every day … he loves you until you ask for a raise.

Long-term relationships are based on solidarity, trust and mutual respect. You as an employee are the customer that buys-in the need for profit of the company every day. The organization should buy in exchange your need: the need for money.

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• How do we grow our revenues?
• How can we manage costs better in the future?
• How can we retain our customers?

Beep!!! Too late! You should have answered this question yesterday!

While your manager uses the words business development strategy even to decide how many rolls of toilet paper will be bought next month, nothing really gets done. He never thinks ahead more than 2 years time. After that period or sooner he will be working for the competition bragging about his contribution to your strategy.

Strategy is not just a buzz word.  The same goes for business intelligence strategy. It is everything you do every minute except when you stay still. As an organization you must invest in people that define, plan, implement and review and let this attitude be your organizational culture.

Do not hire somebody that tells you: “I know where I am going and how to get there.” Find somebody that does it already.

• Openness – creativity and innovation vs. status quo
• Conscientiousness – responsibility and positive motivation vs. unreliability
• Extraversion – energy and positive emotions vs. lack of involvement and introversion
• Agreeableness – friendliness and generosity vs. extreme self-interest
• Neuroticism – emotional stability vs. negative emotions and depression

I have noticed the tendency, in current research, of the newest theory to make peace with the past. Usually the result is a combination of the old theories, each of them applying to specific aspects in the new one.

In organizational behavior the most accepted theory related to the role of personality is the interactionist approach. This theory is the result of mixing another two:

• The dispositional approach – an individual possesses stable traits or characteristics that influence his/her attitudes and behaviors
• The situational approach – characteristics of the organizational setting such as rewards and punishment influence employees’ feelings, attitudes, and behavior

According to the interactionist approach, organizational behavior is a function of both disposition and the situation. When the rules of an organization and the description of the role are not clearly specified and imposed, personality makes a difference. When the rules and role are defined the personality is less important and its manifestation does not affect the work environment.

O.C.E.A.N. is important. The most important predictor of career success remains intelligence (IQ) – separate topic (to follow).

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Values are the things that really matter to you!

They develop under the influence of culture, society, and personality and can be classified in ethical, economic, social, aesthetic, and ideological.

The Rokeach value system is classifying values in two categories:

• Terminal values – goals that you want to achieve.
• Instrumental values – behaviors manifested in achieving your goals.

You are motivated to choose a work environment which is congruent with your values because the discrepancies create an unpleasant situation.

Your personal and professional values are something you have when you enter in an organization. The organizational values that you encounter can be similar with yours or just to appear this way. It is a matter of reciprocity: you and the company both have espoused values – values you want the others to think that you respect.

Beyond all classifications, your values are the source of your choices and as Warren Buffett said: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

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Dynamics, in physics, is the study of the causes of motion and its five variables: momentum, force, potential energy, pressure and power.

Momentum is a product of mass and speed. What makes momentum important for an organization is the purpose of each and every individual in it. The “public” purpose is the creation and delivery of goods and services to the customer, profit, doing something good for others. Only that the fundamental purpose of any individual is survival.

Why the purpose of an organization should be any different? It is not!

Force is the capacity of an organization to change the momentum, the direction in which is going full speed. No matter how rich in resources is a company, it needs effective teamwork. That is why management is an art while leadership is just a trait. And the supreme art is change management.

Potential energy refers to the liveliness of a company at one moment in time, its positioning next to the external environment. You do not need a scientific analysis to determine that. Just look at the employees’ faces and you will know if the company is live and kicking or a soon to be corpse.

Pressure is the force the company manifest on every individual. Motivation! This determines the quality and quantity of the work done. Employees will choose how much effort they will put into it and how long it will take to finish the task. They are not machines and often they are not even conscious of the underlying reason of their behavior.

Power is related to the manifestation of the energy over time. A strong organization benefits of a personality (organizational culture) and some social skills.

These social skills are no different of those required from any of you:

• The ability to remain relaxed so your reactions are understandable by others
• Listening skills
• Empathy with and interest in employee’s situations
• The ability to build rapport, whether natural or learned
• Knowing how, when and how much to talk about yourself

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Social learning is a free form of learning based on interaction with and observation of the others. The decision to learn at work is taken if you think that there will be a positive outcome for you. You can imitate the others, act with the conviction that you can, and you can analyze yourself. These processes are:

Modeling - when you “borrow” somebody’s behavior. You will observe and remember the behavior. If you will be motivated by the possible results you will imitate under the condition that you have the ability to mimic that behavior.

Self-efficacy – when you think that you are capable of performing an action based on previous experience. This works better if your “feeling” is associated with persistence and is encouraged by the positive reactions of others.

Self-management - when your actions are determined by your beliefs. You set your standards and goals and you observe, judge and modify accordingly your behavior.

Social learning theory is not just for the scholars. You need to be aware of its processes as a base of your learning and self-development.

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It seems that these two go together. But motivation alone is not enough. Stupid people with good intention are the worst you can get.

What makes motivation a base for performance are the following factors.

• The OCEAN
• IQ – general cognitive ability
• EQ – emotional intelligence
• Understanding of the task
• Luck

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