What Motivates Us

• We have certain biological drives… that makes us human.
• We also have a reward and punishment drive… that also makes us human.
• A third drive that we have
• The view inside of organizations is two dimensional.  Biological and reward/punishment.
• Neither work in an organization.
• Science has shown that the offer of a larger reward actually brings a worse return in work from an employee.
• Rewards are great if the task is simple, but as the task gets harder, if/then rewards bring less return.
• One of the problems we have inside an organization, is that you begin with the wrong assumptions about people.  That never gets things started well.
• One false assumption: Human beings are machines (complicated machines).  Press the buttons the right way and they will respond.  That is not true and science proves that.  Human beings are more complex than that.
• The second assumption is that human beings are blobs.  They have to be threatened and enticed to get anything out of them.  They are passive and inert.
• Daniel does not believe that is true. Find a two year old that is passive and inert.
• If you get rid of those two assumptions and it takes you in a far more promising direction.
• Three key elements to enduring motivation in more complex tasks
  • Autonomy
    • Management is an 1850’s technology.  How many things from the 1850’s do we still use
    • It is a technology used to get compliance
    • We want engagement today.  Management does not lead to engagement, self-direction (autonomy) does.
    • Autonomy of time, team, task and technique bring results.
    • Google does this by having a 20% project time, which means employees can work on whatever they want with 20% of their time.  Some of their best ideas have come from that.
    • Trying this in a church has to start slow.  Start with a Fed-Ex day (People create something one day and have to deliver it to the team the next day)
  • Mastery
    • Making progress is motivating
    • Giving people space to make progress is motivating
    • In order to achieve mastery, you have to have feedback
    • The workplace is not feedback friendly. (And the church is even less feedback friendly!)
  • Purpose
    • We are seeing the limits of the profit motive.  Profit motive is a good thing, but it is not the only thing.
    • There is a rise in the purpose motive.
    • If the only motive for a company is to raise profit for the quarter that is an insufficient motivator.
    • The only way to really motivate people is to call them to a purpose greater than themselves.
    • We need to be a “we” organization instead of a “they” organization.
• Change happens by people taking small steps in their own world.
• Every great change begins with a conversation.