Teamwork! Teamwork!

IOWA CITY — Kenneth Brown’s job gets him into a lot of offices and other workplaces.

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“I’ve been in offices where they have lots of postings up about teamwork,” said Brown, professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. “ ‘All of us are smarter than one of us,’ things like that.”

Brown started thinking about such motivational posters — those artfully photographed scenes of landscapes, wildlife or sports, accompanied by slogans urging workers to make the most of their time — about a decade ago.

He’s decided the posters don’t mean much unless management walks the walk.

“If you want there to be a team culture, saying it is insufficient,” Brown said. “The cheapest thing you can do is buy a poster and hang it on the wall. You can give people gifts and benefits to make them feel the company cares for them, but at the end of the day you have to think holistically.”

Brown found few direct studies on the value of motivational posters — or coffee mugs or keychains or similar items. He did find despair.com’s line of “demotivational” posters and calendars.

“I’m always interested in employee motivation, training and development,” he said. “The kind of research I do very much requires (employers) to understand the things that guide employee behavior.”

Posters can reinforce company culture, but only after employees see management setting an example.

“One way to do that would be to do it after you’ve really demonstrated progress and commitment,” Brown said.

Manufacturing

That goes for the mandatory safety posters in manufacturing plants.

“The federal government requires some postings,” he said. “That’s a minimum.

“If the company posts anything else, the employee might glance at that and ask, ‘Is it just a poster, or does it mean something to the people who work here?’ The places where safety is built into the culture, sometimes they have posters up and sometimes they don’t, but everybody knows they have to follow the lockout procedure.”

Giving workers a role can further the aims of a motivational poster campaign.

“Let the employees design the art,” Brown said. “If they created it rather than the management, it reflects and advances the culture.”

Ted Lasso example

Brown was struck by an example in the popular sitcom “Ted Lasso,” in which the title character, an American football coach somehow hired to help a struggling English soccer team, posts a simple “Believe” slogan in the locker room.

A player ripped the sign in half, but others realized it held meaning after Lasso demonstrated his own belief in them.

“It only had started to carry meaning in the show when people started to realize Ted actually cared for the people,” Brown said. “The sign actually held more meaning when it was torn up. It rallied them together, and they put it back together again.”

Which adds up to what Brown observes in the real world.

“Posters can reflect the culture,” he said. “But they can’t create the culture.”