No More Mandatory
“Yo, why did you not attend the event?”
“I didn’t see the point, and had more important things to do.”
“But it was mandatory!”
“So what’s going to happen now?”
“Well, I got this little notebook here with a list of names, see? What I’m going to do is put a little mark next to your name. Not the first one, as you can see. I’ve branded these marks as PIP Points™. Once you have three points, we’re going to put you on a Performance Improvement Plan!”
“Ok fine. I will attend the next event. But I’ll sit there with my arms crossed and my back turned to the camera!”
“Oh come on, you’re a professional...”
“Yes, you’re right. I’ll just switch off my camera.”
“Having your camera on is mandatory.”
“Fine. I’ll keep my camera on, but I’ll just be working on other things.”
Probably the most management of managementest of questions in my arsenal is: “what does success look like?” Or, the more pedestrian: “what’s the point?”
For an event, is the point to have as many people attend as possible? If so, making it mandatory is a great idea. You can likely boost your numbers even more by adding some sort of threat: “join this event or else you will get a PIP Point™.”
But attendance rates aren’t really the point, are they?
For a long time I’ve struggled figuring out what rubs me the wrong way about events marked mandatory. The more visible the word “mandatory” appears, and especially when WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, the more my motivation to join these events drops.
I’d like to believe I have a positive attitude. If you invite me to an event, I’m (perhaps naively) going to assume that you put some thought into the point of the event (even if not immediately obvious), and you put some consideration into who to invite to it. So unless, by my own judgment, I have more urgent matters to attend to, I will show up. Camera on. Focused.
However, if you’re going to mark the event as mandatory my excitement drops instantly.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that is until I remembered the three key motivators from Daniel Pink's book Drive. I’m sure you know these by heart, but let me just repeat:
- Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives. People are motivated when they have control over their work and the freedom to choose how they approach their tasks.
- Mastery: The urge to get better and better at something that matters. People are driven by the challenge and opportunity to improve their skills and achieve mastery in their work.
- Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. People are motivated when they feel that their work has a meaningful impact and aligns with their values and sense of purpose.
Then it clicked:
By making something mandatory, you’re taking a rip at my autonomy.
I felt I had the autonomy to decide if I would attend your event or not, but you removed that by making it mandatory. Even if I would have happily attended by my own choice, you now motivated me less to do so by removing that choice.
Sorry about that, I’m only human.
“Who cares if people are motivated” you ask?
This brings us back to my original question: “what’s the point?”
It’s unlikely the actual point of your event is pure attendance. That’s a bit of a vanity metric. It’s likely there’s something slightly less superficial that you’re trying achieve, right? Right!?
When people ask if an event is mandatory, what they’re really asking is: “I don’t get the point of this event, can you explain it to me?”
Answer that question.
Two things may happen as you talk through this with whoever’s asking.
First, it can turn out that you were simply not articulate enough in communicating the point before. After talking through it, they get it now, and will happily attend. Camera on. Motivated. Engaged.
Second, as you talk through things, it turns out the point is actually pretty weak, and this shouldn’t have been an event at all. Or, the person in question shouldn’t have been invited to it. Whoops. We can fix this.
Both are valuable outcomes. It’s just more work, and it’s harder to scale.
That’s annoying.
“Zef, I’m in your team so you have some level of power over me. Is subscribing to Zef+ and reading these posts every week mandatory?”
Sigh.
“Yes. Expect a test in advance of your next performance review.”
