I’ve been thinking about motivation recently. An article this week in the NY Times (Mixed Results on Paying City Students to Pass Tests, 8/19/08) reports that efforts to pay students to score well on Advanced Placement tests resulted in more test takers, but few passing the test. An article in DC Velocity (The Secret to Going “Lean”, Pat Kelley and Ron Hounsell) argues the position of motivating the workforce by paying them for increased performance. (Rather alarmingly, the article suggests the best way is to reward individual performance – which makes me wonder what kind of process improvement that is supposed to encourage?) But overall, their argument is of a piece with the perceived wisdom that money motivates. Businesses believe this absolutely, evidenced by their executive pay structures.
But does money really motivate? Certainly pay that is perceived to be unfair de-motivates, but the inverse isn’t necessarily true. The Brafmans in their book Sway lay out a compelling argument that indeed money doesn’t motivate people to do what you want them to do, and can produce quite the opposite (and seemingly irrational) response. The NYC high school results prove their point: the promise of a cash reward motivated more students to try (that is, take the test), but was ineffective to motivate the behaviors that are necessary to succeeding on the test. So in the workplace: if we want to inspire teams to achieve breakthrough performance, perhaps we need to think outside the perceived wisdom.
In fact, I witnessed this just yesterday in a meeting with the DC staff. Speaking to the point of personal and professional growth, I mentioned off-hand my expectation that work was more than a paycheck – my hope is that everyone has an opportunity to grow professionally, benefit personally, and make a tangible contribution. I was unprepared for the enthusiastic response from the group to the ‘more than a paycheck’ comment; it resonated with them more than I could have expected. Now, I have no doubt that everyone in the room wants more money from his job, and I too want to see them make more money as a result of growing the business and professional growth. But motivation is more complex than feeding the chicken more pellets, although strangely we like to think of ourselves that way.
AddThis
About
- Dionne Dumitru
- My career and life are shaped by my many interests and love of learning and solving problems. I also like making things; the best part is playing with ideas. This blog is part of that outlet.
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
1 comment:
Interesting. Especially since the reverse of the hypothesis you argue against, which would go something like "If you take money away from workers, performance will suffer," seems at least on its face irrefutable. No one goes to work in a for-profit enterprise without at least some monetary incentive. There must be a happy medium in there somewhere where the issue of monetary reward hits some kind of equilibrium with personal satisfaction, etc. A point at which other considerations drive progress more than flat out remuneration. I suspect that this point is different for each individual, but I also suspect that there exists some range within which most people respond similarly to a similar mix of incentives.
One other note: It would be interesting to see the effects in the SAT experiment if the incentive was weighted not only to taking the test but to doing well, as in a dollar per point for points over a certain minimum for example. Kids who have to be paid to take such a test might not be internalizing the purpose of the test, which is to apply to colleges. The higher the score, the the better the college and perhaps the more scholarship money to go along with it. This is a long-range, two-step goal system and the experiment, it seems to me, applies a short-range incentive out of step with the purpose of the test.
Regards
Post a Comment