Motivation, motivation, motivation

I have long argued that the big, secret advantage that authentic businesses have over regular businesses is motivation.  Not just the internal motivation of staff, but the motivation of customers and other stakeholders to support the business.

I have argued that because authentic businesses generate their profits in pursuit of a profound and positive purpose they are more profitable than their regular counterparts.

So, I was thrilled to see the talk by Dan Pink recently on TED.  Dan was previously a speech writer for Al Gore.  You can see it via the “Be Inspired” link on my homepage.  

Dan goes further, he says that performance on simple tasks may be enhanced through a bonus or financial reward, but on more complex tasks financial incentives actually reduce performance.  

Dan puts his case as a lawyer and examines motivation forensically and scientifically.  His conclusion is that:

“There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.”

Dan is referring here to regular businesses, not to authentic businesses.  Simple motivators continue to work well in simple and repetitive operations, but if we want motivate people to care, to solve problems and to be responsible, inspiration and meaning are more effective than cash.

The reason that bonuses and financial incentives work in the banking world is because of the specific micro-culture of banking.  The culture holds that those with the biggest bonuses are the winners and that everyone else is a looser.  

The scale of the bonuses and the young, male culture turn it into a race, where meaning is defined by victory.  Addiction is the motivator, not passion and as we have seen the model is neither healthy nor sustainable.

At the other end of the scale:

“The mid 1990s, Microsoft started an encyclopedia called Encarta. They had deployed all the right incentives. All the right incentives. They paid professionals to write and edit thousands of articles. Well compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time. A few years later another encyclopedia got started. Different model, right? Do it for fun. No one gets paid a cent, or a Euro or a Yen. Do it because you like to do it.

Now if you had, just 10 years ago, if you had gone to an economist, anywhere, And said, "Hey, I've got these two different models for creating an encyclopedia. If they went head to head, who would win?" 10 years ago you could not have found a single sober economist anywhere on planet Earth, who would have predicted the Wikipedia model.”

We have the opportunity to redesign our careers and our businesses.  We can all direct our lives to doing things that matter to us.  There is not a shortage of issues and challenges.  And we can make our businesses more profitable by solving  them.  It only takes a decision.