Everywhere & Anywhere: Passepartout

John's thoughts and commentary

"I'm Not A Horse, I'm A Person"

What motivates people to work better?

 

Dan Pink, best selling author and speaker  has a few somewhat 'out there,' yet proven ideas about workforce incentives. I found this unusual video  that does a great job of getting his point across. The video is ten minutes long. Take a moment to watch it. 

His studies show how financial incentives are effective for improving performance with simple, mechanical tasks. But if you want to improve results requiring cerebral effort, data says money can actually de-motivate people and degrade results. 
  
Pink insists people are motivated by Autonomy (self-direction, ownership of a problem), Mastery (urge to improve one's self and skills) and Purpose (aiming towards a higher goal, altruism). In fact, he insists "bad things happen if the Profit motive is unmoored from the Purpose motive." Perhaps these three things are the path to creativity and ingenuity.

Although the paycheck, bonuses and stock options are very important, I don't believe any employee thinks about them when making decisions (day to day or strategic) at work. People ALWAYS aim for the other things. At least the Linchpins do. I'm delighted when I can move my company’s needle where it should be going and I can see my effect on this.

People are not just talking animals: we are not rats pulling on a chain to get a treat and we are not salivating dogs waiting for a bell.

Just guessing here, but I bet it wasn't bonuses  that got a man to the moon.

 

 

 

Centralized, predictable, standardized and … vulnerable?

Blue_ringed_octopus


We like things predictable and uniform in business. We can manage things better that way. This assumes we have perfect knowledge of the future and can fend off the threats of competition, government regulation, and rogue events from technology. Yet bigger enterprises may tend towards a delusion: the assumption their formidable size and disciple around uniformity will protect them from risk.

But consider this: last month a single man from Nigeria boarded a plane with explosives hidden in his clothes. He managed to slip past TWO airport security checks. Were it not for his lack of preparedness and the heroic actions of the plane’s passengers, he might have killed hundreds of people. But he did cause disarray in the governments of many countries. And though travelers are not cowering, they are now inconvenienced by inane travel restrictions.

 

So, the bad guy won after all. And worse, the governments of the world did the same-old same-old: they reviewed their rules and decided to unify  and strengthen them.

 

This is not how Nature would respond to a threat. In his intriguing article, Nature's Lessons For Adapting To The Terrorist Threat, Dr. Rafe Sagarin , a research scientist at the University of Arizona, tells us animals survive threats through decentralization. Octopuses’ skin cells change color to adapt to surroundings without a single command from the animals’ nervous system. He says “limited central control and lots of autonomy to individual parts that sense and respond to threats” help the animal quickly evade predators… and become a better predator.

 

Businesses face tradeoffs in an uncertain future. As the world’s economy improves, so do chances for corporate conquest. To seize them, should you find a new balance between centralization and autonomy? Predictability and risk? Standardization and creativity?