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IMPROVE PERFORMANCE WITH AMO THEORY

Your employees can be very competent and motivated, but if they do

not have the opportunity to contribute, or if they do not thrive, it affects

their performance on the job.


According to the AMO theory, our job performance is determined by Abilities,

Motivation and Opportunities. That is, the employee’s ability, motivation and

opportunity to make a contribution.


These three factors should not stand alone when it comes to employees’

actual job performance. If you recruit and work with employees with high A, M

and O, and they work for their own gain and do not cooperate, it will impact

the employee’s well-being and overall work performance.


Therefore, well-being is a further element in the equation, which will be called

A x M x O x well-being. If one of the factors is zero, then the total balance, i.e.

the overall performance, also amounts to zero.


This article presents the AMO theory as a management tool for employees

and organisations and when putting together teams.


What can you do as a leader to increase A, M and O?

To increase A, M and O, you can use the three factors as a structure for

appraisal interviews by comparing your employee’s responses to your own

perception of what they can do, desire, and have the opportunity for in order

to gain a mutual understanding.


Ability: What do your employees find that they are capable of?

Motivation: What motivates your employees, and in which tasks do they

specifically find meaning?

Opportunity: Which opportunities do your employees experience having? An

employee development plan should be based on the specific role and

responsibilities of each employee. I.e. how does their role / responsibility

match the strategy of the business? What contribution does the employee

offer with his or her given function for the organisation to succeed in its

objectives?


And how can you unfold his or her AMO potential even more?



Develop robust organisations with AMO

Looking at the organisation as an organism, all body parts must work together

cross-functionally. It is not enough that the lungs utilise their vitality to the

fullest, if capacity is weaker in other parts of the body.


To create well-functioning teams, it is crucial that managers look inwards and

assess the composition of their employee profiles. The risk of a wrong team

composition is solely that the management will not succeed in creating a

culture of trust, which increases the risk of disabling necessary synergies

between Ability, Motivation and Opportunity in overall team performance.


With well-being as part of the equation

You can hire the most executing, analytical project managers, specialists, and

managers (Ability), develop them and involve them (Motivation) and offer

opportunities (Opportunity). But if these people cannot cooperate, take

responsibility towards a common goal, and show a proper attitude in their

daily work, their satisfaction rate and well-being will be weakened.


Over time, the organisation can fall into a ditch of several sub-optimising

cultures, where common values are missing in daily practice. If, for example,

many of the employees who execute for their own benefit are being promoted

as high performers, there is a risk that the spotlight shines on stars that lead

to short-term results with a short-term behaviour and stagnant bottom-up

feedback, which has a critical impact on the business and organisational flow.

This can result in a lack of feedback, tactical silo thinking in communication

and relevant knowledge that is not shared – if it does not benefit their own

perspective to share it.


Goal-oriented passion as a prerequisite

To develop employee potential, you as a leader are required to know yourself

and be willing to work on your own development.


As a leader, you should therefore at least semi-annually ask yourself these

questions:


1) What are my skills (A), my motivation (M) and my opportunities (O), when I

look back, look at the present and imagine the future? How do I thrive in

working with my colleagues?


2) How does my overall AMO fit with the AMO of my employees and their

well- being?


3) How does my overall AMO and well-being fit with my leadership peers at

the same level and our overall strategy?


If you as a leader ensure this self-knowledge and self-management top down,

you enhance knowledge, and you gain an effective management toolbox to

create daily direction, employee development and involvement bottom up.


A trust culture creates results

To create a culture where work performance is high, management must make

a conscious effort to ensure proper allocation of both management and

employee profiles. And put this work on their strategic agenda.


If companies are successful at this very component, a culture of trust will

have the best conditions. And in return, it will heighten job satisfaction, the

everyday desire to go an extra mile and the individual courage to share knowledge that

management relies on to navigate their business proactively.


Most managers and employees want to work for a common goal rather than

their own. It creates robust organisations where employees thrive and work

passionately. This top down and bottom-up connectedness amongst

employees also minimises prestige and political power as the main

behavioural business drivers, building everyday performance with cultural

distrust and sub-optimisation.


A culture built on trust is difficult to document on the short term, and

therefore, key business goals for each employee and department – with the

related important human functional skills rather than interpersonal as to what

kind of person you are in the day-to-day cross-functional corporation – have

taken over and can serve as the goal rather than the means to success.


Companies should not only pay the necessary strategic attention to how you

build an organisational infrastructure with the strategically necessary people

functions, but also focus on the important factor of what kind of people skills

you need to increase the level of trust in your company.


Are you focusing solely on hiring and retaining highly effective people striving

to be the no. 1 without having much preference to cooperate, understand and

connect with their colleagues and employees – unless it has a specific

business result pay-off?


Does your company primarily reward people working for themselves and their

own business siloes as the present and future company stars, or does your

company reward people working together to reach a common goal? And does

your company know the difference between the two and know which

employees and high performers belong to each of the two groups of

employee values?


It may seem right to play down the qualitative, which culture is, for fast

results. But the risk of developing a non-robust organisation increases

significantly, as culture is created by people only. A non-cooperative system

lacks trust and confidence in everyday life, and the necessary value chain

knowledge sharing stagnates.


The article is based on the following literature:


Boselie, P.: “High performance work practices in the healthcare

sector: a Dutch case study”. International Journal of Manpower. Vol.

No. 31 1, 2010, pp. 42-58.


Boxall, P. and Purcell, J.: “Strategy and Human Resource

Management”. Palgrave MacMil-lan, 2008.


Harney, B.: “Unlocking the black box: line managers and HRM

performance in a call center context”. International Journal of

Productivity and Performance Management. Vol. No. 57 4, 2008, pp.

275-296.


Na Fu et al.: “Exploring the performance effect of HPWS on

professional service supply chain management”. Supply Chain

Management: An International Journal. 18/3 (2013) 292-307.

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