Motivation

I watched this great video about motivation this morning. I have included the link to the blog post where it is located.

http://gotboondoggle.blogspot.com/2010/06/surprizing-truth-about-what-motivates.html

I have been preaching these ideas for years. It is good to see that it is backed up by hard scientific fact and so I do not have to rely only on intuition and gut-feeling (not that those are inherently bad things).

I have been following Daniel Pink (the video is his work) on Twitter, but did not really investigate his work until now. Look like I will need to get hold of some of his writings. I am always looking for interesting, enlightening, out-of-the box thinkers.

Basically the gist of his video (you really should take the ten minutes to watch. It has a great visual element) is that what we have traditionally thought motivates people is not true. Money and rewards only motivate people when it comes to basic, straightforward mechanical tasks (where thinking is not desired or involved in creating an outcome). So if you are just producing widgets in a mind-numbing, never ending, do-not-question cycle, then rewards (mostly monetary) will help. However, if any thinking is involved, then rewards do NOT motivate. In fact MIT has shown that the higher level of cognitive function or thinking involved in a task, that rewards result in poorer performance and may actually be detrimental to the results.

So what truly motivates people when we need to perform cognitive or thinking tasks? Dan Pink points out three things:

• Autonomy: The desire to be self-directed
• Mastery: The desire to get better at something
• Purpose: The desire to have a meaningful impact

In class I pose a set of similar thought provoking questions to learners:

• Why do you exist? (Tied to cognitive motivations)
• What do you do? (Tied to mechanical motivations)

Most people explain their job (what they do) rather than focusing on why they exist. Dan Pink points out that when a company disconnects or unmoors the purpose motive from a profit motive then bad things begin to happen. So we need to focus people back on why they (or their organizations) exist. What is their purpose?

I completely agree with this. People have said I am anti-capitalist. That is not true. I am anti-greed. If people focused on their purpose and fulfilled the needs of other people, then profit will result. Since money has been shown scientifically NOT to be a motivator, than why are people still so driven by it?

I postulate that people are afraid to take a hard look at themselves and truly understand their needs. People do not like what they see when they look inside their own minds and souls. They are afraid they will see imperfection and abnormality. But what is perfection? What is normal? When we stop looking outside ourselves for validation of what is right, perfect and normal then we can accept that we are all normal, perfect and right in our own individual ways, just as our Creator intended.

Perhaps one day the world will put aside money as a scorecard and start seeing people as the scorecard--their happiness, needs, desires, wishes, friendship, relationships and love as the true measures of a life worth living.