I would like to bring some research to your attention. Depending on where you are in the organisation, you might not want to show this to your boss – it might cost you money. But if you are the boss, you need to know about this. It might revolutionise your business.
Much of my reading these days is about the psychology of work, particularly collaboration and motivation. A recurrent character in that reading is Dan Pink, an almost-lawyer, turned psychologist. The topic of this post is wonderfully covered in his TED talk last year:
Essentially what Dan says is “Our motivations are unbelievably interesting… … We are not as endlessly manipulable and as predictable as you would think.” – what science tells us about human motivation, and what we do in business, are heavily at odds with each other. Dan talks about three keys to getting people motivated, which we’ll come back to in a moment.
“There’s a mismatch between what science knows, and what business does.”
Rewards that Don’t Work
The fact is that higher incentives lead to poorer performance. For simple, rule-based tasks, the ‘carrot and stick’ approach does work. But for more complete problems, the kind we face in business today, it doesn’t. Motivation is more complex than that. Now understand, if you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated. You need to pay people enough to ‘take money off the table’, as Dan Pink puts it.
I love this infographic approach to the podcast from Dan’s more recent talk at the RSA – thanks to Eaon Pritchard and Geraid Hensel for bring it to my attention:
Back to the three factors Dan mentions, and you can set about putting things right.
Autonomy
“you probably want to do something interesting… …let me get out of your way”
One of the subtexts behind the move to more ‘distributed’ businesses, which is driving the growth of our business, and Milestone Planner, is the move to a more autonomous work force. Describe the problem, not the solution, and let your greatest brains get to work on it. Which leads on to:
Mastery
People want to be good at things. Actually, scrap that, good people want to be BRILLIANT. Let’s face it, no-one wants to suck at what they do – we all know that isn’t fun. Let people do what they are good at, and help them to be good at what they do. Provide the right tools, environment and training to enable that to happen.
Purpose
I’ve written about this at length here and elsewhere, and many other people have too. People want to make a difference, and the easiest way to connect with that is to give them a purpose that links what they do to making the world in which they live “a little bit better” – Does everyone in the business know what it’s purpose is? Do they understand how that makes a difference, and who it makes a difference too? That simple connection makes a huge difference (and it’s one of the reasons we provide a view across projects in MilestonePlanner – so that people get to see the bigger picture, and use SurveyOptic to help people understand what matters to their employees).
Great post Benjamin. So much of business puts barriers in the way of, and adds costs to, what it really needs it’s people to do. Frustrating but fixable.
I especially like your point about describing the problem, not the solution. This harks back to so many other successful approaches like Covey’s “Begin with the end in mind” and GTD’s Natural Planning Model. Not a new idea but a very important one and tools which facilitate this, like Milestone Planner, will make it more prevalent.
Good work.
There’s another great book (it was the one that properly turned me on to this idea of ‘Purpose’ as a key motivator) from a few years back, Meaning Inc by Gurnek Bains.
Worth a peek if you’ve not seen it.
Thank you, James! It is quite stunning that businesses carry on as they are, given what we know (and have known for a long time).
Eaon – I’m heading over to Amazon right now to check that one out. Sounds good.
I saw Dan Pink talk at the RSA earlier this, though I haven’t read his book on motivation yet. He is a great speaker (though he seems to have said everything in his TEDTalk – he didn’t add anything new in person!), but I also think he is oversimplifying a fair bit.
I think he is absolutely right that if you want the best people, you should pay them sufficiently to make money cease to be the issue. But then, all other things being equal, another organisation could come along and poach your workers (staff, colleagues, coworkers, whoever) for marginally more money. So it doesn’t really change much: in a competitive environment where there is a free flow of people as well as capital, if I can get more money for the same effort, I am likely to do so. And I am not really motivated by money!
There has been a lot over the last couple of years about bankers’ bonuses. I believe that whilst bonuses may not motivate success in a significant fashion, they also act as signals: if you want people who are going to function effectively in what is cut-throat competitive environment, find those who ARE motivated by big bonuses – and hire them. That’s the way the economic model works.
(And hopefully they’ll start adding some ethical tests into the mix as well…)
I do think Pink’s ideas – which are not new, really – could have a big impact on future organisations and their structures – particularly if the fable move towards flat structures with portfolio workers actually happens. If one has a variety of different jobs with different organisations on the go and they all pay roughly the same, how is one organisation going to stand out from the rest? Providing interest through autonomy, mastery and purpose (surely part of Maslow’s higher level needs?) sounds like a good way to do it!