"There are smart motivated people that work for the company already. Pay them a decent wage and they will take the management positions."

This is the problem everywhere, apparently. I watch one good person after another pack up and get the hell out of this place because the pay isn't enough. When employers don't do whatever they can to retain those people who are essentially the life blood of the company, those people leave... and the company slowly dies.

You have an excellent point. Any successful corporation wants to setup a corporate culture based on motivation. Motivation comes for many reason and none of them are directly driven by the management team. It's up to the employee to find reasons to stay and excel. Nevertheless senior management must make sure there are indeed very compelling and varied reasons to stay with the team.

Thus any goal of a successful motivated corporate culture should be setting up a true path of succession and internal promotion. It's wonderful to get new blood into the talent pool, but consideration should also be made very early on by senior management in an employee's career as to who can be mentored and who has the underlying raw skills/talent to be promoted.

Quick punch downs for any business of any size to consider when developing a succession plan:

* Setup succession plans for all levels of the work force-- not just senior management.

* Encourage cross training & peer to peer mentoring not only within work units, but across those work units and between upper/lower job sets.

* Keep good job descriptions intact. If you cannot tell people what their job is how can you expect them to do it? These also help employees gauge what they need to attain that ideal job.

* Annual reviews from supervisor to direct report should be built on actionable goals in training & skill advancement. Even the most perfect employee can be motivated by placing an... (show all)

other benchmark in front of them. Encourage outside the job skill set training (i.e. finance course for techs or basic management courses for craft workers).

* Employee reimbursement plans for educational courses are a must! Where possible reward through additional pay when degrees/certifications are attained or at the very least recognize the achievements as advancing the employee closer to their career goal.

* Provide on site training even in the form of refresher courses or certified speakers quarterly. Invite a wide scope of participants.

* Anything worth doing is worth measuring-- not only set metrics/standards, but have real measurements put in place to assess the value of those benchmarks. Don't hide short fallings-- look for way address real issues and act on them.

* Recognize someone doing something right every day... not just those doing things wrong.

Unfortunately if senior management doesn't get it-- it's not going to get it. This is a job reality. If there are training course take them because ultimately at the end of the day no one can take away any training you can get accredited for. Good luck!

DJ's shoutback should be rREQUIRED reading for every senior mgmt exec in the country!What is it about upper levels that they seem to forget WHY their company is in business. Retail(I assume the original post was a retail employee)IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!DJ,you hit it dead on.All CEO's should be required to spend 3 weeks at the low levels of their co-not just for photo ops for the co newsletter,come in and cover vacations,all shifts,with an OPEN MIND.See what you learn!

I agree... It seems everyone is a rush to get something for nothing. As much as current corporate culture would like to dictate, people don't go to work for the feel-good sensation of helping the company. Sure, a big draw to working is a sense of accomplishment, but when you wake up in the morning and drive to work it's really to pay the bills. This is all different, of course, if you have a large sack of cash such as trust funds or past vocation successes resulting in enough reserves to pay your expenses without care.

This doesn't stop at just the employers though, everyone's on the take. Employees are always trying to get by with the minimum requirements possible, although you could argue again, that this is also due to lack of inspiration and aspiration...