Drive - KeynesYouDigIt/Knowledge GitHub Wiki

  • Encarta vs. Wikipedia

Types of Motivation

  • Motivation 1.0- survival. Worked until you needed to cooperate.
  • Motivation 2.0- carrots and sticks. Taylorism is an operating system for this- workers are like parts in a complicated machine, and if they do the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine functions smoothly. So, you reward the behavior you want and punish the behavior you don't.
  • Motivation 2.1 takes into account some internal drives. Deming, Maslow, and Herzberg.

Routine vs. Non-routine work

  • Routine work can be outsourced or automated. Artistic, empathetic, nonroutine work generally cannot. The economy is moving toward higher degrees of non-routine work.
  • Carrots and sticks work for routine tasks, not for heuristic, creative ones. They actually hurt performance.
  • The best use of money as a motivator is to pay them enough to take the issue of money off the table.
  • The Sawyer effect: rewards can turn play into work or work into play. It has to do with what you're obligated to do.
  • Continent if-then rewards are the problem. Unexpected rewards don't dampen intrinsic motivation.
  • Controlling short-term behavior does long-term damage.
  • Incentive pay is positively correlated with worse performance.
  • Rewards give us focus, but that comes at the cost of creativity and clear thinking.
  • The intrinsically motivated end up with better rewards over time anyway.
  • Personal goals are usually healthy, external goals (sales quotas, etc) have dangerous side effects and lead to unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation.
  • Defined punishments are the equivalent of being able to "buy" a behavior.
  • By offering a reward, you present a task as undesirable.
  • Once you start rewarding a behavior, you've put that person on the hedonic treadmill.

Carrots and sticks

  • Extinguish intrinsic motivation
  • Diminish performance
  • Crush creativity
  • Crowd out good behavior
  • Encourage cheating, shortcuts, unethical behavior
  • Become addictive
  • Foster short-term thinking

Carrots and sticks work for mechanical tasks because there's no intrinsic motivation to undermine. You can try to turn it into a game (reverse Sawyer effect).

For routine work:

  • Offer a rationale for why the work is important
  • Acknowledge that it's boring
  • Allow people to complete the task their own way

"Now that" rewards as thanks after the task is complete are better than "if then" rewards to attempt to motivate. Be careful about repeating enough to become a new if-then. Use non-tangible rewards, such as praise, and give specific feedback.

Self-determination theory: when our need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness is met, we're motivated, happy, and productive.

Type X and Type I

  • Type X: extrinsically motivated
  • Type I: intrinsically motivated
  • Type I outperforms type X in the long term, but not always in the short term.
  • Type I behavior is both born and made. I behavior is a human default state, X behavior is learned.
  • Type I behavior does not disdain money or recognition.
  • Type I behavior is a renewable resource
  • Type I behavior promotes physical and mental well-being

Autonomy

  • People aren't human resources, they're your partners in achieving your vision

  • In a "Results-only work environment" (ROWE), people are much less likely to leave for an extra $20k

  • Management is an 1850's technology- autonomy is our basic human nature.

  • We all have the capacity to self direct in the long run. We're not inert, waiting to be prodded into action. We're active by default.

  • Innovation is inexpensive

  • Mediocrity is expensive

  • Instead of categorizing extrinsic or intrinsic, categorize as controlling or autonomous

  • Autonomy is not the same thing as independence- one can be autonomous and interdependent

  • Empowerment presumes that the organization has power and benevolently ladled some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees

  • Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the 4 Ts

    • Task
      • McKnight (3M) - "Hire good people, and leave them alone"
      • 20% time (100% time?)
    • Time
    • Technique
    • Team

  • If the rewards come from time, time is what firms will get

  • Billable hours have no place in motivation 3.0 because there's no direct link between time input and quality of output

Mastery

  • Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement. Only engagement can produce mastery.
  • Flow comes from having clear goals and fast feedback
  • 3 laws of mastery
    • Mastery is a mindset. It relies on learning goals, not performance goals.
    • mastery is a pain- showing up on the days you don't want to show up.
    • Mastery is an asymptote. You need to always reach for it even though you'll never get there.

Purpose

  • Purpose maximization over profit maximization
  • It shouldn't be box-checking- that extinguishes intrinsic motivation
  • Begin with purpose and use profit as a way to get there