Business author Dan Pink (former speech writer for Vice President Al Gore) pulls the lid off conventional notions of employee engagement. Citing fascinating research into human motivation and performance, this highly engaging talk shows the deep divide between “what science knows and what business does.” The opposite of happiness really is boredom, so motivating your human resources with intrinsic rewards versus the old-fashioned, carrot-and-stick extrinsic incentives will boost productivity, innovation and creativity.
On 09.02.09, In Bright Ideas, by Julia Fischer Baumgartner
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I listened to this presentation and began laughing. I have been doing exactly this for the last 25 years in a slightly different context. I train companies to learn the power of this thinking. But because I began working in factories with my training, I started with teams to prove my point.
I found that employee motivation when trying to solve a problem is rarely successful with the carrot or reward. Just by participating on a team, a truly egalitarian experience, turns a team into a phenomenal performer. What I do is motivate the team with the thrill of working on solving a problem with a great goal: $100,000 of lost annual opportunity or business inefficiencies with a cost to fix of less than $2,000. We take WII/FM (What’s in it for me) off the table because the owner agrees up front that if the employees participate that and deliver the targeted results, he will be able to give raises. We have worked at over 150 companies and this has always been the case. In many situations, the company was in such dire straits that keeping their job was enough reward.
So my response to your presentation is this. There is a bit of autonomy in a team in that creativity is needed to get the ball rolling but the major thing that happens in these teams is the sense of purpose and community effort (teamwork). By the way, the way that most successful teams get started is someone (an individual) is “pissed off about something” and that starts the ball rolling (autonomy of thought).
But the biggest issue that you need to fight is not the logic of what you are saying but the process of conversion to this new way of looking at business. As I have tried to do my thing over 25 years (150 companies, 50,000 employees trained and 10,000 ideas implemented), there is a resistor of change that I call the “Black Knight” (remember Monty Python’s “Search of the Holy Grail” – the Black Knight at the bridge) a major resistor of change.
I mention this because as you try to bring this thinking to the masses of a corporation, they will get behind you. But you must have the CEO’s buy in to support it no matter what. Some CEO’s are pussies and cave with pressure from analysts or other outside sources.
Good luck on your work from one who has been in the trenches for a long time. I get such great personal satisfaction from my work.
Best,
Len Bertain, Ph.D.
SF Bay Area
len@bertain.com
510-520-8011
http://www.bertain.com