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August 19 - August 31, 2020
Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.
“One who is interested in developing and enhancing intrinsic motivation in children, employees, students, etc., should not concentrate on external-control systems such as monetary rewards,”
The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.
“If-then” rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy.
“People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.”4
“We find that financial incentives . . . can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”6
“Those artists who pursued their painting and sculpture more for the pleasure of the activity itself than for extrinsic rewards have produced art that has been socially recognized as superior,” the study said. “It is those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them.”9
For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.
But the “if-then” motivators that are the staple of most businesses often stifle, rather than stir, creative thinking. As the economy moves toward more right-brain, conceptual work—as more of us deal with our own versions of the candle problem—this might be the most alarming gap between what science knows and what business does.
Titmuss’s hunch might have been right, after all. Adding a monetary incentive didn’t lead to more of the desired behavior. It led to less. The reason: It tainted an altruistic act and “crowded out” the intrinsic desire to do something good.13 Doing good is what blood donation is all about. It provides what the American Red Cross brochures say is “a feeling that money can’t buy.”
Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects.
Like all extrinsic motivators, goals narrow our focus. That’s one reason they can be effective; they concentrate the mind. But as we’ve seen, a narrowed focus exacts a cost. For complex or conceptual tasks, offering a reward can blinker the wide-ranging thinking necessary to come up with an innovative solution. Likewise, when an extrinsic goal is paramount—particularly a short-term, measurable one whose achievement delivers a big payoff—its presence can restrict our view of the broader dimensions of our behavior.
The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.
When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best—there are no shortcuts. The only route to the destination is the high road. In some sense, it’s impossible to act unethically because the person who’s disadvantaged isn’t a competitor but yourself.
“Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.”
“Rewards are addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes an agent expect it whenever a similar task is faced, which in turn compels the principal to use rewards over and over again.”
It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces the principal to offer larger rewards to achieve the same effect.20
CARROTS AND STICKS: The Seven Deadly Flaws 1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation. 2. They can diminish performance. 3. They can crush creativity. 4. They can crowd out good behavior. 5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. 6. They can become addictive. 7. They can foster short-term thinking.
• Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary. A job that’s not inherently interesting can become more meaningful, and therefore more engaging, if it’s part of a larger purpose. Explain why this poster is so important and why sending it out now is critical to your organization’s mission. • Acknowledge that the task is boring. This is an act of empathy, of course. And the acknowledgment will help people understand why this is the rare instance when “if-then” rewards are part of how your organization operates. • Allow people to complete the task their own way. Think autonomy, not control.
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Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.
“If tangible rewards are given unexpectedly to people after they have finished a task, the rewards are less likely to be experienced as the reason for doing the task and are thus less likely to be detrimental to intrinsic motivation.”4
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.
Intrinsically motivated people usually achieve more than their reward-seeking counterparts. Alas,
Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.
My dad’s generation views human beings as human resources. They’re the two-by-fours you need to build your house,” he says. “For me, it’s a partnership between me and the employees. They’re not resources. They’re partners.” And partners, like all of us, need to direct their own lives.
Motivation 3.0 begins with a different assumption. It presumes that people want to be accountable—and that making sure they have control over their task, their time, their technique, and their team is the most effective pathway to that destination.
“The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business.”
“incremental theory” take a different view. They believe that while intelligence may vary slightly from person to person, it is ultimately something that, with effort, we can increase.
“With a learning goal, students don’t have to feel that they’re already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they’re smart.”9
“grit”—defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”
“Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the results of intense practice for a minimum of 10 years.”11 Mastery—of sports, music, business—requires effort (difficult, painful, excruciating, all-consuming effort) over a long time (not a week or a month, but a decade).12
“Whereas the importance of working harder is easily apprehended, the importance of working longer without switching objectives may be less perceptible . . . in every field, grit may be as essential as talent to high accomplishment.”14
Forty-eight hours without flow plunged people into a state eerily similar to a serious psychiatric disorder. The experiment suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagement that Motivation 3.0 calls for, isn’t a nicety. It’s a necessity. We need it to survive. It is the oxygen of the soul.
sixty-year-old boomers look back twenty-five years—to when they were thirty-five—and a sudden thought clonks them on the side of the head. “Wow. That sure happened fast,” they say. “Will the next twenty-five years race by like that? If so, when am I going to do something that matters? When am I going to live my best life? When am I going to make a difference in the world?”
“As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone,” it begins. And on it goes for nearly five hundred words. “I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate,” the oath-takers pledge. “I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.”
handing individual employees control over how the organization gives back to the community might do more to improve their overall satisfaction than one more “if-then” financial incentive.
Physicians in high-profile settings like the Mayo Clinic face pressures and demands that can often lead to burnout. But field research at the prestigious medical facility found that letting doctors spend one day a week on the aspect of their job that was most meaningful to them—whether patient care, research, or community service—could reduce the physical and emotional exhaustion that accompanies their work. Doctors who participated in this trial policy had half the burnout rate of those who did not.13 Think of it as “20 percent time” with a purpose.
What’s more, graduates with profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other negative indicators—again, even though they were attaining their goals.
“One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attainers is that they’re not having good relationships. They’re busy making money and attending to themselves and that means that there’s less room in their lives for love and attention and caring and empathy and the things that truly count,”
our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.
We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.
As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the big question: What’s your sentence?
At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday. Did you do more? Did you do it well? Or to get specific, did you learn your ten vocabulary words, make your eight sales calls, eat your five servings of fruits and vegetables, write your four pages? You don’t have to be flawless each day.
So before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself the small question: Was I a little better today than yesterday?
Why not snip five years from retirement and sprinkle them into your working years?
Staying motivated—directing your own life, making progress, and pursuing purpose—isn’t easy. So get rid of the unnecessary obligations, time-wasting distractions, and useless burdens that stand in your way.
“What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.”
“Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time.”
Seek constant, critical feedback. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t know what to improve.
