In Three Points:

  • The traditional model for understanding motivation is deeply flawed and needs a complete overhaul.
  • Disengagement due to this misunderstanding of motivation leads to productivity losses of $300 billion dollars a year in the US.
  • We can eliminate this wastage by understanding the three components of motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

The first decade of the 21st century has been a period of underwhelming growth in business, technology and social progress due to the over-reliance on carrot-and-stick-style motivation, and as we research this underachievement more closely, it is clear that tweaking that motivation style will not suffice; we need to rethink how we view motivation fundamentally.

There are seven main flaws of carrot and stick motivation that make it unsuitable for most cases:

  • It extinguishes intrinsic motivation: When external rewards are introduced, people’s intrinsic motivation suffers.

  • They diminish performance: People perform all but the most mechanical tasks worse.

  • Crushes creativity: People focus on getting the job done to get the reward without thinking about the nature of the job at hand.

  • Prevents good behaviour: When a task becomes transactional, people are much less likely to do it.

  • Creates unethical behaviour: Goals create a narrow focus and allow for breaking the rules to accomplish tasks.

  • Causes addiction: Achieving goals becomes much like an addiction where bigger and more frequent “hits” are required to get the same satisfaction.

  • Fosters short-term thinking: If-then goals promote only thinking far enough to complete the next goal.

There are ways to mitigate the consequences of if-then rewards:

  • Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary
  • Acknowledge the task is boring
  • Allow people to complete the task in their way

In the workplace, people are receptive to hearing feedback on how they are doing, but only as long as the input isn’t an attempt to manipulate their behaviour.

The three components of true motivation are autonomy, mastery and purpose (in that order)

Autonomy

Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.

Tom Kelly – General Manager, IDEO

The key factors to motivation are individuals having autonomy over their tasks, time, technique and team.

This is incredibly out of sync with traditional business operations, but a new type of business, a ROWE (results-only work environment), is becoming more popular. The main idea is that management isn’t about making sure people are doing their job; it is about creating the conditions for people to do their best work. Companies that have moved to ROWE have reported increases in productivity, decreases in stress and less staff turnover.

Management is a technology: it has been designed and developed, not discovered as a law of nature. Most of the theory of management was created in the early 1900s by Taylor in conditions that are completely different to the way most people work today. Despite these changes in conditions and the reduced effectiveness of management outcomes the ideas of what management is hasn’t changed much.

Humans are inherently curious and exploratory, look at kids for example, but the way we are managed in school and work drives the autonomy out of us.

Some people say investing in innovation is expensive, but in the long run, it’s cheap. Mediocrity is expensive, and autonomy is the answer.

According to research, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better performance and persistence, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater psychological well-being.

Half-way solutions of providing autonomy such as empowerment tend to fail. They presuppose the organisation has all the power and benevolently provides it to grateful employees. This isn’t autonomy. It is a more civilised method of control.

We define the success of work more by the time we put in and less by the result. We probably need to flip this thought pattern.

Mastery

Mastery is the desire to get better at something that matters.

Where old methods of motivation seek compliance as a goal, better methods seek engagement, and engagement can produce mastery.

Gallup’s research found that 50% of US employees are not engaged at work, and nearly 20% are actively disengaged. The total cost of this disengagement is around $ 300 billion a year in lost productivity.

How-Extraordinary-Leaders-Double-Profit_WP-2019.pdf

Mastery is best pursued when in flow: the most satisfying experience in people’s lives when they become unaware of the task they are doing and the passage of time (they are in the moment)

Mastery is a mindset of constant improvement, there is no end to the pursuit of mastery.

To pursue mastery, switch from using performance goals (get an A on my test) to learning goals (learn to speak French fluently).

Setbacks are inevitable in pursuing mastery but can be useful in framing your pursuit of mastery. They can be used to measure progress.

There are some laws of mastery:

  • Mastery is pain: You will need grit and dedicated practice
  • Mastery is asymptotic: you will receive exponentially diminishing returns as you become closer to mastery, and you cannot achieve complete mastery. It’s a journey not a destination.

The mastery mindset is that the joy is more in the pursuit than the realization. Mastery attracts because mastery eludes.

Goldilocks tasks are designed to be at the right intellectual stimulation level for the task doer. They are neither too difficult nor overly simple. They combat the feelings of anxiety caused by tasks that exceed capabilities and the boredom of tasks that do not require full capability. Goldilock tasks are designed to support working in a state of flow, where time passes without notice. This state is where people’s best works occur.

Purpose

The disengagement Gallup found isn’t a symptom of laziness. In the same time period that disengagement at work increased the engagement in volunteering rose. People are simply not finding purpose in their jobs.

A new form of company that places an emphasis on purpose over profit is becoming more popular. These companies’ goal is to pursue a purpose, and profit is an enabling force rather than an end goal.

Checklists can be detrimental to creating purpose. It shifts the focus away from the purpose and towards ticking boxes. This can be relevant for writing tests. If there are box-ticking exercises to complete the purpose of building robust, maintainable software is hidden, and the goal becomes ticking boxes. This has a negative impact on intrinsic motivation.

How people spend their money can have a greater impact on well-being than how much people spend. Spending money on others can actually increase our subjective well-being.

Ways to increase motivations

  • Monitor your flow: Set an alarm on your phone for various times of the day. When it goes off record what you are doing and how you are feeling. Look for things you do and times of day when you are more likely to be in flow.
  • Ask a big question: Develop your purpose as an individual and distil it into one sentence: your sentence.
  • Keep asking questions: At the end of each day ask was I better today than yesterday? and then ask why.
  • Give yourself a performance review: Ask if you are contributing to your life’s bigger picture on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
  • Practice deliberate practice: where your practice has one objective: to improve. Seek constant critical feedback and make sure the practice is pushing the limits of your ability.

Pink, Daniel. Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Riverhead Books, 2009