Most executives assume the biggest motivator at work is compensation.
They’re wrong.
Research—and decades of organizational performance data—show something far more powerful: the feeling of progress every single day.
When employees believe they are winning—moving the needle, improving, mastering something meaningful—their motivation skyrockets. Yet most banks fail to define what “progress” actually means for their teams.
The result? Talented employees feel stuck. Lower performers stay disengaged. Leaders mistakenly assume capability is the problem—when in reality, the system is.
In this video, Roxanne Emmerich reveals why progress is the hidden driver of performance—and how leaders can activate it inside their organizations.
You’ll discover:
Why compensation and appreciation alone don’t sustain motivation
How undefined progress quietly creates disengagement in your team
The simple “one-needle” mastery approach that turns struggling employees into top performers
When leaders create visible progress systems, something remarkable happens: people begin to believe they can win.
And once they believe they can win, performance accelerates.
Watch this week’s episode to discover how to build a culture where progress fuels performance.
Watch now.
Trick question for you. What is the number one motivator for employees?
Every time I ask executives, they say pay, up to a certain level. Yes, the research shows that—but that’s not it.
Feeling appreciated? Yes, that’s important—but that’s not it.
Are you ready for the answer?
The answer is the feeling of progress every single day.
But what is progress?
That is the question that needs to be solved. For many people, as we established last week when I was talking, we mentioned that they think they’re tied to profit in such a way that they believe they’re performing in the top ten percent. So perhaps they do not truly tie to profit.
What we have to figure out for them is: progress on what?
Here’s what I’m going to suggest.
When I did graduate work in organizational development, I discovered the concept of making sure you never get ahead of your skis. You take people from learned helplessness—the belief that “I could never do that”—and you give them one thing to do.
You guide them to mastery.
You celebrate it. You high-five them. And you make sure the system is in place to keep that needle up.
Then you show them another needle to move.
You put a system in place after they move that one up to make sure it stays there. Then you add another.
Here’s why this matters.
Some of your lower performers are actually high performers who have simply not been properly groomed because they cannot answer the question: progress on what?
But people get energized by the feeling of making progress every single day.
Once they start to feel like they’re winning, suddenly some of your lower performers become some of your higher performers—and you didn’t think that was possible.
But here’s the real miracle.
They didn’t think it was possible either.
Next week, join me as we cover the next piece: How do we create a workspace everyone wants to be in—one that supports high performers and doesn’t allow low performers to suck the energy out of the room?
Growing a bank isn’t some mysterious process that involves tea leaves and oracles. It’s more like building a house or tuning up a car’s engine, with a power tool for every step and a hand tool for every part you need to work on. Effective builders have a “franchise system”—the proven best way to do things that minimizes mistakes and maximizes results per hour spent.
The process begins with one crucial step: Find out what matters to your best customers, then build hundreds of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) around those components and list them explicitly in your marketing materials.
Most banks focus on what they should do. That’s a good thing. But too few seriously evaluate what they are currently doing that has to stop. Awareness of the common characteristics of low-performing banks can keep you from falling victim to any of these practices before you join the group.
Let’s start with the first four:
Let’s face facts. You know it is true. Banks stink at sales culture.
Most say they’re working on it…but most have been “working on it” for three decades now
For starters, if you want it to be read and followed, it’s one page long. No, not 3 to 5 pages—ONE! And it starts by identifying target niche markets because that’s what the whole plan has to be about.
Of course, it’s commonly known that 50% to 80% of mergers fail to meet expectations—in fact, they’re economically a disaster.
Getting a clear framework in place BEFORE you hit the road matters more to the outcome than anything else. Unaligned teams, fuzzy objectives, and a lack of common goals often bog down strategic planning sessions.
I get a kick out of watching Mad Men. There’s something captivating about being transported to another time like that.
Slightly less fun is the feeling I get when I see banks in the real world and the present day throwing money away on traditional advertising like it’s 1965.
If you saw that title and immediately thought, “Uh…succession plan?”—we need to talk.
A recent survey across all industries showed that leadership succession planning, or the lack thereof, was the most pressing area of concern among CEOs.
Improving the commercial loan portfolio means bringing in high-quality business customers who are in growth mode or who have some other financing needs—while minding...