Daniel Pink presents and old insight well on an 18 minute You Tube. Ichak Adizes knew this 30 years ago.  Frederick Herzberg outlined the basics of motivation in One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?  in the Harvard Business Review 1967.

 

Now Daniel Pink challenges the business world to wake up and use what science knows.  You can motivate people in the PA (Producer-Administrator mode of Adizes) with incentives.  P mode is when you have clear tasks and methods and results.  Like an assembly line.  EI work (Entrepreneur-Integrator mode of Adizes) requires creativity, adaptability and connectivity with others has huge declines in performance when traditionally incentivized.

 

Problem is that most work now has a large EI component and your bonuses and incentives drive productivity down.  The higher the incentives, the poorer the EI performance according to research from MIT, LSE, and Carnegie Mellon. Listen to Daniel Pink thencome back for more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

 

Hopefully you are now a more sophisticated leader who knows that the type of motivational system you choose depends on the type of work. And choosing the wrong one will drop productivity 2 to 3 times!

 

MANAGEMENT IS AN ASSUMPTION

This is the deeper view Pink presents on You Tube.  The science of management arose with factories.  For thousands of years before people worked on farms.  No schedule, no job descriptions no performance reviews, no promotions, no nothing related to management.  Your job was what was needed.  Time to plant and you planted.Time to harvest and you harvested.

When was vacation? When there was not work.

 

When management arrived in factories, concepts like ‘job descriptions’ were seen as unnatural. We have now accepted management-hook, line and sinker.  Dan Pink says its time to go.  Management is like a typewriter.  Invented by humans, served a purpose, and now outlived its purpose.

 

How should we organize work.   Switch frm external motivators to internal.  Here are four of them.

 

1-Purpose: a clear and meaningful focus  on adding value for others.

2-Values: Clear set of guidelines on how we work and relate to each other.

 

Nick’s Pizza and Pub has these.  No policies, no procedures and exceptional performance in a highly competitive market. (If you want to go on the next REX field visit to Nick’s let me know at Will@Rexroundtables.com.

 

By using Purpose and Values consistently and with integrity the next two factors emerge.

3-Autonomy: No job descriptions, no reporting relatinships, no reviews, no schedule.  Let people control theri own lives.  Stop putting them into a system that treats them like children or prisoners.  This is scary. SO is climbing out of the box of your own assumptions.  There are lots of examples where this is being used, and producing high productivity, high engagement and low turnover.  See Small Giants by Bo Burlingham for example.

 

4-Mastery: Humans love to master skills.  THey love to get better and know there is no end to this.  Many sports and hobbies have this quality and it ignites peoples passion and commitment.

 

COMMENT

What do you think?

What have you tried?

Have you read Dan Pink’s book A WHole New Mind?

Tags:   assumptions · engagement · incentives · Motivation · productivity · rewards1 Comment