Motivation for the 21st Century
External motivators were excellent for the 20th Century. Today, our habit of extrinsically motivating employees is no longer effective – instead of improving performance, the carrot and stick method creates a blockage to innovation. With increasing complexity in our workplace, it is no longer the case that you can increase the incentives to increase the performance.
Here’s the video that explains the details:
Dan Pink makes the argument that Management –> Compliance and Autonomy –> Engagement. For ultimate performance in the 21st Century, people need jobs that are interesting and important. To create those jobs, provide employees with Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
But how to repair the mismatch between What Science Knows and What Business Does?
My passion is to apply insights from psychology to make work and life better. On this site I gather and reflect on bits and pieces of wisdom related to business, careers, self-improvement, finances, & health. 
I would suggest that the problem with applying what Pink believes is twofold – one – it is somewhat "untestable" in the field and two – it takes longer and requires more "management" change.
As a business leader I can – rework all my managers and the way they approach their work (training, compensation, incentives, rewards, etc.) – wait and see if it works two -three years down the pike – OR…
I can run a group travel program and give everyone who hits goal a trip to Bermuda.
I hope, through your work, my work and many others, we can create a body of knowledge that supports giving employees control and accountability as away of driving performance.
Thanks for a great post.
Good points.
I'd say the issue is more "untested" rather than "untestable" though — it becomes a let's watch other companies do this first and then copy their methodology ("best practices").
Change is difficult and risky. So it is much easier to either do what we have been doing — until something comes up and we MUST change.
I am thinking the key to bridging the gap between ANY mismatch science and practice is to make it easy, step-by-step, implementable in small chunks, and foolproof.
Not only untested but too general, The devil is in the details. As a fan of Dan Pink I'd love to see specific scenarios, company rules of engagement, and methods or specific behaviors that enable a company to provide those positive-sounding job opportunities. How to test? Worth trying yet requiring considerable more specificity
Ah, the details. A few companies have implemented ROWE, but that's not the best solution for every company or all industries. But that doesn't make those companies/industries undeserving of engagement, they just need to work to figure out a solution, piece-by-piece that — as Paul mentions, requires A LOT of change — and can be (much) more effective than processes in place now.
Hi,
You are right about nowadays everyone uses carrot and stick method for the work.The innovation is gone from the mind of employers and employees.Your article is really helpful to me to get the actual business movements.
proteine
I found the intellectual strength from Stephen Covey after he called the idiotic use of industrial age “carrot and stick” model of motivating people!. I am a retired soldier turned HR and find it an oxymoronic practice to use C&S approach when it works against the very fabric of teamwork, collaboration and interdependence.
If we had done away with this Pavlov based animalistic theory, we would never have to deal with greed, mistrust, silos, elitist and a heap of other dysfunctional behaviours at the workplace.
I am not saying that stars need not be recognised and rewarded. It should be anchored to long term career growth and development. Employees should be made to serve, honour and operate as a TEAM and sacrifices made in the best interest of the “family” where loyalty,camaradieship and esprit de corp means a whole more than a individualised vacation in the Bahamas.
The reductionist thinking in linking money to motivation is the business world is probably the biggest paradox that has come into question, since the entry of Gen Y’s.
So, have we come to a conclusion who among the workers deserve the credit of being the key personnel – sales, production, R&D, Finance or HR?.