Keeping People Motivated
Kent Jacobson, a.k.a. "Mr. Success"

As we approach the summer months, many people will be distracted from work or normal routines by increase outdoor activities, vacations, and our kids out of school, business cycles and even the warmer weather. Your challenge as a parent, manager or small business owner is how to keep people motivated to perform their assignments.  I think there are three key factors that you need to recognize and prepare for behavior adaptation and modification during this period. Recognize you are the example people are keying off of. 
 
Key Factors for Successful Motivation.
 
Communication, always important, but this time of year it is critical.  Why, because everyone else is juggling their personal schedules as well job assignments. You must encourage two way communiqué, this will assure everyone is involved and keeps the work flowing smoothly with minimal disruption. Start communicating the critical milestones or dates that need to be supported and planned for now, then each of these items can be planned around. The identified critical dates can be the customer orders, product releases, holidays, planned vacations, depending on your situation identify these through the summer months. Be aware, your normal routine may not begin again until up to 3 months for now when the kids are back in school. Maybe you should backwards plan from this date week by week until you can arrive at today.
 
Flexibility, is your ability to adapt to change at any given time or when presented with an abnormal situation. If you have are a company with built in flex time (window of arrival and departure times for worker schedules) around standard core hours, communicate this to everyone and as a manager treat each situation differently if possible. You may be limited by Human Resource procedures or State Workforce Regulations, check into these if you have questions.  The key is to let the flex time work in your favor, but everyone must be communicating so the work or task is still ultimately covered.
 
Positive attitude, keep your smile it truly is contagious. Sure there are going to be disappointed people during this period, but focus on the bigger picture, not just the individual situation. Keep the goals informant of everyone, why are we doing this, how we are doing against the goals.   Schedule an activity that can be viewed as a reword and positive gesture about the midpoint and if possible prior to a holiday. This can be a catered lunch for everyone, prize give-ways of some type, let everyone off for the afternoon with pay. You get the idea, let the people know you appreciate their efforts during this time of year.
 
Set forth a constructive model for everyone to follow, do not become the negative case in point.