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Why Motivation Fails |
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A store manager of a large departmental shop in Sydney, Australia implemented an embarrassing (and happily short-lived) safety incentive: Employees caught violating safety procedure were immediately given a two-foot rubber chicken on a string to wear around their necks–in front of customers. To get rid of the chicken, an employee needed to catch another employee behaving "unsafely." The
practice quickly descended into a game of hot potato, with employees
chasing one another around the store in search of the slightest violation
to rid themselves of the safety chicken.
Many people don't feel motivated at work,
and there's a very simple explanation for this: The motivational
techniques used by most managers don't work. While few companies
use rubber chickens (fortunately), most of the standard motivational tools
like promotions, bonuses, employee of the month awards, pep-talks and
free-pizza-nights are downright harmful to the drive, energy and
commitment of employees. It only leaves them feeling manipulated, cynical
and demotivated.
The result: According to one Gallup study 60-80% of
workers are not engaged at work. They feel little or no loyalty,
passion or motivation on the job. They're putting in the hours, but
they're not doing a great job and they're certainly not happy at work! Millions
of employees especially in India have to drag themselves out of bed 6-7
days a week and report to work although on weekends hardly ever anything
happens.
As the illustration above shows, there are four different
kinds of motivation. Only one of them works and unfortunately, many
managers focus exclusively on the other three. A bit strange isn't it? How
many kinds of motivations exist? There are actually four (4):
First, motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation is when you want to do something. Extrinsic
motivation is when somebody else tries to make you do something.
Secondly, there is positive and negative
motivation. Positive motivation is when you want to get something -
motivation towards some goal. Negative motivation is away from something
you want to avoid.
Combine these two dimensions and we get four kinds of
motivation (don't you just love these four-quadrant models). Let's see why
three of the quadrants are useless for creating motivation.
Extrinsic motivation doesn't work
In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the
classroom the top students get A's, and in the factory or office
the best workers get raises. It's an article of faith for most of
us that rewards promote better performance.
But a growing body of research suggests that this law is
not nearly as ironclad as was once thought… If a reward — money,
awards, praise, or winning a contest — comes to be seen as the reason
one is engaging in an activity, that activity will be viewed as less
enjoyable in its own right.
There are still serious drawbacks in the extrinsic
motivation:
1. It's not sustainable - As soon as you withdraw
the punishment or reward, the motivation disappears.
2. You get diminishing returns - If the
punishment or rewards stay at the same levels, motivation slowly drops
off. To get the same motivation next time requires a bigger reward.
3. It hurts intrinsic motivation - Punishing or
rewarding people for doing something removes their own innate desire to
do it on their own. From now on you must punish/reward every time to get
them to do it. Some of the world's worst places to work in the world are
the China and India.Despite the fact that in these countries, you have
managers who have learnt the techniques to manage from Australia, USA, UK,
they still go back to their countries and treat their employees as` human
waste'. In India, Government run schools are have pathetic management
who still hold on to archaic principles and children of mainly the
lower castes, rock-bottom socio-economic status are offered `free lunch'
just to attend classes.
In one of Kohn's examples, children in a small town in
Turkey were given points for every books they checked out of the
local library during the summer vacation. The points could be redeemed for
a free pizza, in an attempt to encourage reading. The children in the
program did indeed read more books than other children. But after
the program ended, when reading no longer paid off in pizza, those
children read far fewer books than others. Their own intrinsic
desire to read books had been subsumed by the extrinsic reward, and when
the pizza went away, so did the motivation.
Negative motivation doesn't work
Heart patients who've had double or quadruple bypass
operations face a very simple choice: They must stop eating
unhealthy food, smoking, drinking and working too much or they die. That
has got to be the ultimate negative motivation and it carries the ultimate
price for not doing it. So guess how many of them actuallly manage to
change their lifestyle sustainably. Two years after the operation, how
many of these heart patients have managed to stick to their new habits?
Come on, take a guess. 10%. faced with the ultimate negative motivation, 9
out of 10 are still not able to make simple lifestyle changes. Which is
why you see many patients coming in for their second or third heart
operations. And which is also strong evidence that negative motivation
does not work.
One doctor created a program where heart patients were
instead taught to appreciate life (rather than fear death). They practiced
yoga, meditated, got anti-stress counseling and got a healthy diet, all
aimed at making them enjoy life more. The result: 2 years later, 70% of
the patients maintained their new lifestyles.
When even the threat of death can't make people change
their lifestyle sustainably, it becomes clear that motivation based on
avoiding something is simply not as effective as motivation based on
achieving something.
So what does work?
We currently act as if people are not inherently motivated, rather that
they go to work each day and wait for someone else to light their fire.
This belief is common among managers and employees alike… What enhances intrinsic motivation? The list includes:
To these I would add:
So rather than trying to bribe people to want
things using pizzas and promotions, managers should help their
people to discover meaning and develop skills at work. What some managers
don't realize is that people want to do good work. Create a
happy, positive work environment and people are naturally motivated. Even
better: They motivate themselves and each other.
And that surely beats the punishments and rewards.
References
Brown, N.K,(2006) " Why employees have to be
self-motivated", Johnson Publishers
Carter, K.K, (2007) "Happines at work- The Hard
Way", Silver Moon Publications, 6th edition |
