Provocative title, eh?
If you’ve read Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” you’ve been introduced to one
of the many theories of motivation. If
you haven’t read it, buy the book for goodness sakes. It’s great! If you need more convincing, see
the youtube video it’s
wonderful.
There are a lot of motivational theories. You can look at them in Wikipedia. Daniel Pink seems to base his work on the self-determination
theory of motivation applied to knowledge workers. To sum “Drive” up he says that motivation in
knowledge work is driven by autonomy, meaning, and mastery.
Of course there’s a lot of supporting information in the
book and video, but he refutes the idea that the carrot and the stick technique
of motivation works for knowledge workers. I think he’s right. The problem comes when people don’t pay close
attention to what these motivational factors really mean or the prerequisites
for these motivational factors to kick in.
Let’s look at very first assumption that Mr. Pink makes in
the beginning of the book: once money is
taken off the table as a motivator then autonomy, meaning, and mastery come
into play. I’ve seen companies ignore
the pay issue completely and jump right into the trilogy of motivators, we
don’t have to pay as much as the next company.
It doesn’t work that way, just read about Motivation Crowd
Theory. If an organization does anything
less than removing money as a motivator, the self-determination theory of
motivation doesn’t work: other motivational theories will explain a person’s
behavior. Lack of adequate pay or even small raises leads to a loss in the
feeling of meaning and can directly lead to employee moral issues.
