An eye on the impractical pursuit of quest in the light of Maslow Hierarchy of need 

Do you remember one of those meetings where your mind was on ERROR 101 mode trying to map how the suggestions can take place in the light of current budgets, challenges, resources, capabilities, priorities… etc. & you are actively assessing whether you smile & node your head or should you be open about your apprehensions. 

Sally El Akkad, Director of Marketing and eCommerce at Electrolux Egypt

Let me tell you about an amazing book famous with its main character, The protagonist of the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, a nobleman called himself Don Quixote enamored by Chivalric acts who recruits a peasant called Sancho Panza to be his squire promising him an island to govern at the completion of their journey, the pair stumble into series of comedic misadventures in the Spanish countryside, in one famous episode, Don Quixote attacked windmill imagining it as giants threatening the village. This Novel is one of the most important books of all times  

For some people’s perspective of Leadership, he is a visionary leader. He could imagine what others couldn’t see, committing to his goals and challenging the society and surrounding culture, didn’t care about people’s criticism, he focused on bringing fairness & demonstrating courage in his acts. For many of his lovers, he is a real demonstration that Life is to be challenged no matter what if you believe in something just go after. Yes, he might be honest, dignified, idealistic, he wants to save the world, kill the giants and save the paysans. 

I can see the nobility of his quest; he is trying to make a positive change to the world even if it is just in his head. The pursuit of the quest & idealistic goals, I respect quests, I love them and believe in their necessity for company growth but let us agree that it is like a pinch of salt, if we lose the logic of the quantity to be added the meal will be ruined. Logical balance between vision and framework is essential to get the buy-in of the stakeholders who shall be collaborated to help deriving this vision, this is where magic happens! Everyone gears up to do a paradigm shift to derive the company growth, departments work in harmony to achieve the ultimate objective/ purpose of its existence.  Then what can make a struggle? I assume that it happens when… 

  • it doesn’t correlate with a clear policy or law and certainly when someone defend that it is the market practice, I remember a situation when I had a debate with a senior leader that my team need to challenge legal team to pass an activity that is clearly against competition law and I was labeled that I didn’t exert much of force to pass it, I was combustible but all the governance team backed me up in the discussion.
  • When management don’t do proper explanation of the objective, the way forward “ the How & why” so people lose track & focus, I recall lot of times when I did not understand why are we requested to do some tasks, we are giving answers to questions , then everything was a miserable mess where the answers of the whole team was towards a totally different context and if the management at that time where clear about the set up and the context of the questions they could have got totally different answers. Furthermore, the criticality as well in this matter, is that even your best employees will lose interest in debating the right things and leaving you to discover the hard way the consequence of the unrealistic pursuit because they know that it is useless to talk, you will ignore their opinion anyways or even attack them.

Honestly in my opinion, in a workplace, Don Quixote as a leader is SIMPLY INSANE, he sees what doesn’t exist with distorted perceptions of outer events “the guy was seeing giants rather than windmills for God sack!”, filled with distorted perceptions of knighthood, stubborn who is obsessed with an idea. This is very hard to tolerate, there is always a fine line between hallucination & empowered imagination, & ignoring the madness in trusting his own imagination and disregarding reality that others are trying to tell him about is so bitter in real life and put organizations existence & continuity in a true risk.

This madness fuels the culture with ambiguous and paradoxical vibes, shutting ears in front of team recommendations, insisting on stamp out the worrying peculiarity of employees is just frustrating & even curb cultural progression, as per Maslow hierarchy of needs “implication at workplace” It is impossible to progress to the next level without first fulfilling the current level because an employee will not have the motivation to do so. It is also worth noting that employees will default to their lowest level needs if their higher level needs are no longer being satisfied, for example, in an economic downturn employees will also focus on compensation, safety, or stability concerns & will not be able to hear the rosy promises of the future where salaries will be better & company financial turnover will be stronger when they are not getting the bigger vision or do not trust their management sanity & decision making process.

Maslow also introduced the idea that our needs constantly change as one need is met then so we desire the level above it. The pay rise we received before won’t motivate a Hypo caliber for long, the recognition award we were presented previously won’t satisfy worker current needs for appreciation, and the training course delivered earlier won’t satisfy employee need to be learning new skills and knowledge now. Thus, managers must evolve in their understanding of employees real motives, they need to put time & energy in understanding what derive their team members, otherwise a time will come where employees act like zombies, just repeating their daily shores because they need their salaries, passion-less, creative-less, raising the desperate red flag of “deal with what you have so that you afford paying for what you like”  

This led us to the exquisite importance of both engagement and motivation where both are team-based attitudes, so a team of individuals who feel their needs are being met can certainly create a more positive, engaging culture within the workplace linked to the bigger purpose of the company that is being served with the organization annual growth objectives and its CAGR to success. Such synchronization is what makes great companies! 

Now think about the Don Quixote you worked with across your career journey and send him this article with an innocent smile even better try to have an open discussion with him/her where the intention was for the good of the company but sometimes people need to be reminded with the importance of active listening & the consequences of affecting team ownership of decisions.