The Mysteries of Motivation

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  Peter Pre­vos, 10 June 2010.

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Har­vard Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos 2010, ‘The Mys­ter­ies of Motiv­a­tion’, hypotheticorp.org, web­log post, accessed 22 Feb­ru­ary 2012, <http://hypotheticorp.org/wp/management/motivation/>.
APA Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos, (2010, June 10). The Mys­ter­ies of Motiv­a­tion [blog post]. Retrieved from http://hypotheticorp.org/wp/management/motivation/
MLA Style Cita­tion
Peter Pre­vos. “The Mys­ter­ies of Motiv­a­tion” hypotheticorp.org n.p., 10 Jun. 2010. Web. 22 Feb. 2012

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?

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    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?

  • http://www.prevos.net Peter Pre­vos

    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.