The Surprising Truth Where Motivation Comes From
What would happen if you took a group of MIT students and gave them a set of challenges featuring word and spatial puzzles, memorizing, and shooting hoops. Then made it a bit more interesting by providing monetary incentives for different levels of performance. Low performers would be paid a small reward, middle performers a little more, and the top performers would get paid very well. How would they perform? (See video below)
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts was recently nominated for a Webby for their animated lecture by Dan Pink which discusses this fascinating question. What drives workplace motivation?
The old idea of rewarding innovation and performance with money alone is no longer viable…to a certain point. Studies are finding that financial incentives are motivating, if the task is performed with pure mechanical skill. Once even a rudimentary level of cognitive skill is required, monetary incentives can actually hurt performance.
So what works? Dan Pink found that motivation in the workplace comes down to three areas.
- Autonomy: This is the ability to self manage. Knowledge workers are consistently more engaged with their work when they are allowed to have some time to work on projects they see as interesting or a priority. You may have heard about Google’s 20% time. The concept that Google employees get to spend 1/5th of their time on projects of their choosing. Google isn’t the only company doing this nor the first. 3m and Atlassian have also followed this idea and seen impressive innovation, fixes, and new products as a result.
- Mastery: Dan Pink makes a good point here. He asks why do people play musical instruments? It won’t pay the bills, get them a promotion, or serve any other monetary purpose. We answer, “It’s fun, we see ourselves getting better and that feels good, it makes me happy.” It goes back to pure monetary reward as not being enough. You can see mastery over monetary reward in the social media age we live in. Look at Wikipedia, Linux, and Apache all projects contributed to by volunteers. On Twitter you can follow masters of cooking, photography, copy writing, gaming, and even sex. Many of them have regular day jobs and are sharing their expertise FOR FREE. Why? They are becoming a master in their field and others are recognizing it. Which leads me to the next point.
- Purpose: Having a sense of meaning and belonging in the work you do can almost single-handedly eliminate monetary rewards. Ever hear those lucky few who talk about their work saying they would pay to do it? Nine times out of ten that kind of attitude and passion comes from working inside of your purpose.
Do you feel motivated by the work you do? I know we don’t all have jobs were exactly excited about, but I hope that this video post can help you reflect on your own motivations. See if there are ways to find those three keys in your workplace. If it isn’t possible, make a plan on how you can find that either after work or in a new job.
If you feel stuck about what really motivates you we have a validated motivations assessment you can look into trying.
Find your passion. Fit it in your life. Become a master.
photo courtesy of Deegan Marie
Thanks for the article. I never saw this video until today. It makes sense that money rewards performance only to a certain extent. I guess the trick is to do things which you feel have a greater purpose than just to make money, and then find a way to make money from it. Or of course, have a normal job and do it for free on the side.
But it seems like the businesses that do the best in the world are the ones who believe that their product or service truly makes the world a better place, or at least better for the people who buy from them..
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Isn’t that the truth. It used to be hard for me to see how passions could be turned into businesses, but I’m starting to see it more often now that my eyes are opened to it.