Drive

By Carlos V. Cornejo

If the kind of work involved in your company consists of straight forward tasks such as repetitive data entry work, an assembly line job, selling goods, then the carrot and stick incentives would easily work. Carrot would mean giving cash bonuses and stick would be punishments or penalties if there are failures in delivering the goods. 

But if your company is into intellectual work such as a software design, learning (university or school), or consultancy work, the carrot and stick system of reward would not work in the long run.  Your workers would need a higher form of motivation to work and get the job done and this book by Daniel Pink, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” could help you with that. 

Dan Pink would recommend Three Intrinsic Drivers:  Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

 

Autonomy

When Atlassian, an Australian software company, allowed their programmers to have a complete day of freedom by giving them a free day to work on a project of their choice or when they were paid to work on whatever programming code they wanted, with whomever client they wanted, they came up with several new product ideas and dozens of creative solutions to existing problems.  The initiative raised the motivation of the employees as well as their creative skills.

Atlassian co‐founder Mike Cannon‐Brookes told author Daniel Pink, “If you don’t pay enough, you can lose people. But beyond that, money is not a motivator.” What motivates people beyond equal pay is work autonomy.

By giving yourself and others a degree of flexibility within a rigid framework with a choice of tasks, free time to work on side projects, choice of technique, and the opportunity to pick team members, you will spark the intrinsic drive of autonomy. Author Daniel Pink calls these the four T’s of autonomy: freedom to pick the task, the time, the technique, and the team.

 

Mastery

When Swedish shipping company, Green Cargo, wanted to overhaul their performance review process, they implemented a key finding by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: when workers are given tasks slightly above their current skill level and stay in a state between boredom and anxiety, they are more engaged, more motivated to work, and more creative.

Green Cargo implemented Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s findings by changing the way they conducted performance reviews. During each performance review, managers now needed to determine if their employees were overwhelmed or underwhelmed with their current work assignments. Then the managers needed to work with each employee to craft Goldilocks work assignments: work assignments that weren’t too hard, not too easy, but just right above their

current skill level.

What effect did Green Cargo's new performance review system have? Employees were more engaged and reported feelings of mastery over their work. After two years of these new performance reviews, Green Cargo became profitable for the first time in 125 years.

Dan Pink says, “One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious.”

 

Purpose

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, would always start her meeting with workers by stating the company’s mission and vision.  She said, "You have to repeat your mission and your purpose...over and over and over. And sometimes you're like, doesn't

everyone already knows this? It doesn't matter. Starting out the meetings with ‘This is Facebook's mission, this is Instagram's mission, and this is why WhatsApp exists (is critical)’."  When Sheryl Sandburg starts her meetings by stating the mission, she's sparking the third intrinsic driver: a sense of purpose. 

Purpose is the reason organizations like ‘Doctors Without Borders’ can get highly skilled doctors to willingly travel to poor villages around the world, live in harsh conditions, and get paid very little money to do so. These doctors are motivated to work because they are fueled by a sense of purpose they get from helping others.

All companies have a purpose, which is to serve society in selling an item or offering a service.  Leaders need to tap into that service or purpose mindset to motivate workers and not just to go work every single work day to earn a living.

 

(Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo is the chairperson of the Electronics Engineering Department of Mary our Help Technical Institute in Minglanilla, Cebu. Aside from teaching engineering subjects I also teach values and Christian Doctrine classes to students in tertiary level.)