Motivational Maps in action.
Case Study: Motivational Maps at Ordnance Survey
Business goal
Andrew Loveless, the Commercial Director, was particularly keen to use the motivational map tool to enhance the motivation and therefore performance of his directorate.
Background
Ordnance Survey (OS) is best known as the mapping agency of Great Britain. At OS we employ around 12,000 employees and have a proud heritage of investing in our people. As a result we have been able to constantly grow and change in response to our ever changing market demands. Around 1,000 of our employees are based at a head office building in Southampton and a number of field surveying and sales roles are remotely based in order to cover the whole of Britain.
The maps enabled laser precision, actionable insights, nothing is genericised. In working to empower my own leadership team there were intense moments of self-realisation and powerful conversations as a result
Andrew Loveless, Commercial Director, Ordnance Survey
Approach
We started to use motivational maps in 2014 in our Commercial business group (around 150 people) and our Marketing and Communications business group (around 40 people). We had just appointed new directors to lead each of these groups. They needed to work closely together and needed their people to have the right levels of skills, knowledge and motivation to achieve the commercial aspirations of the organisation.
OS worked with James Sale to run a ‘train the trainer’ model across these business groups, effectively training up the two senior management teams in order that they could then train their own managers and people around the meaning and use of the motivational maps.
Results
The biggest impact from the initial round of motivational map questionnaires across the two directorates was the buzz they created. Many people talked about their motivation preferences and shared their results with colleagues and this created a shared language and sense of wider team. In order to support and grow this buzz, the senior management teams had set the tone by publically sharing their own motivational map results and how they had found them useful.
Managers at all levels across these business groups picked out that the key benefit of motivational maps was the conversations that they enabled with their people.
The maps also seemed to create a shared agenda between managers and their people due to the visibility of motivation results to both. They allowed conversations at a meaningful and non-threatening level as they could start around the context of motivation and work from there rather than starting around performance.