When the enterprise agreement in an organisation comes to an end and both management and staff are prepare to enter the trenches for the next round of negotiations. Having participated in two such negotiations, on both sides of the table, I have learnt a lot about the irrationality of people’s motivations. One such irrationality is the argument is that more pay will motivate people to perform better. But does the old carrot and stick approach always work? Will the promise of a bonus make workers slobber like dogs on a treadmill?
Unfortunately, management scholars and psychologists can not agree on what actually motivates us. There are almost as many motivation theories as there are religions. One thing is certain, however, the traditional behaviourally view that you should offer monetary rewards to achieve the required behaviour is not so clear.
Interesting experiments show that the traditional motivational theories only work for simple physical activities. As soon as the job requires intellectual activity this does not work. The research even shows that productivity decreases!
Watch this great presentation from theRSA.org. They discuss these fascinating experiments about what makes us tick.
When managing a business this insight raises interesting questions. How do you hire people that are intrinsically motivated? How do yo make sure everybody is motivated towards achieving the same objectives? If physical motivators are no longer effective is brainwashing the only option available?
Love the motivation blog and its insights into how organisations do not understand the topic. I am fascinated to hear your musings on how this applies to performance management. Does it mean that you can only ever correct a performance defect that requires no cognitive effort? In which case all performance management other than the trivial is doomed?
You pose a very interesting question.
The research mentioned in the presentation invalidates only the behaviourist approach to performance management, i.e. relying on conditioned responses (carrot and stick). This does, however, not render all performance management doomed.
These findings imply that a conditioned response is not a useful pathway for motivation in intellectual labour situations. The implication of this is that managers of people undertaking intellectual labour need to have a much more sophisticated performance management tool kit. My own approach is a Socratic method in which I coach people through asking questions that aim to help them understand their job better and the impact of their actions.
By the way, the best introduction to the Socratic approach is to read Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro — a great read.