IWAM: Giving People the ‘Jobs of their Lives’
Throughout the now several decades of its consulting activities nem has observed that most business executive owners tend to subscribe to what it calls ‘The Nine Paradigms’ where they are very good at 3 business functions (e.g. usually the thing that the business does and this is why they initially started the business), average at 3 activities and poor at 3 business activities.
It is these paradigms that business owners do poorly that nem has found tend to impede businesses development, growth and ultimate value that it delivers to the business owner/s.
nem has also found that when examining these ‘Nine Paradigms’ many of these activities that are done ‘well’ and ‘average’ are shared across the cohort of business owners. For example, many are good at financial analysis, operational excellence or marketing but all tend to score poorly in human capital management and openly admit that people management is their least favourite business activity.
This is quite disturbing since a central tenant of business management theory is that ‘people are a business’ most important asset’. So, it would appear that constantly scoring low on this activity is retarding business development and value generation across the broader economy. The opportunity then is to have some business ‘tools’ at one’s disposal in order to raise one’s performance in this essential business management activity - Human Capital Management.
IWAM (the Inventory of Work Attitudes & Motivations) is one such ‘tool’ that allows a manager to understand ‘what’ activities motivate an employee in the work environment and what activities do not. Through ranking and weighting 40 activities that are typically encountered in any work environment the manager is given the ability via IWAM to see the employee as an INDIVIDUAL and not a member of a cohort or class (typical of most psychometric profiling tools). In so doing, the manager is afforded the insight to design an employee’s role so that they are doing activities that they find highly motivating, often to such an extent that they do not see the activities as ‘work’ – this is the job role where the employee thrives as they have been given ‘the job of their lives’!
What is IWAM?
IWAM was developed in Europe in the late 1990’s by Patrick Merlevede and draws heavily on neurolinguistic psychology principles.
An IWAM profile is developed by candidates when they undertake an on-line questionnaire where in each of 40 questions, they are required to answer by nominating their five preferences from least to most motivating. This takes approximately 30min.
Based on the identified questionnaire preferences IWAM provides (processing is done instantaneously in Europe) a listing & relative weighting of 48 ‘motivators’ (‘meta programmes’) and it is this ranking that provides the unique ‘fingerprint’ of the individual as it is statistically unlikely that two people would have the same IWAM motivational profile.
The Uses of IWAM
IWAM is commonly used to assist managers in the following staff management activities (in no particular order):
Succession & Recruitment: identify the key elements of success for a particular role and look for these activities to be high ranking in a position candidates’ profile.
Performance Appraisal & Mentoring: IWAM will identify the occupational activities where an incumbent is likely to underperform. Mentoring programs can then be developed to improve an individual’s work performance.
Employee Management: know how to motivate the employee via language and the use of work activities.
Models of Excellence: If there are ‘excellent’ performers in a group e.g. sales team, then identify what an IWAM profile for ‘excellence’ looks like in a particular work environment and then recruit for it – successful candidates to be highly motivated by similar activities to those that rank highly in the IWAM profile of that work cultures ‘excellent’ performers. This use of IWAM can be really transforming for a business.
In closing, the beauty of IWAM is its ease of use, its applicability to broad spectrum of Human Capital applications and its unique ability to view everyone as an ‘individual’ which, of course, we know they are!
Glenn Mansfield
nem Partner
March 2025