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 Companies come to me all the time, seeking my help to "motivate the employees," as if I am going to show up and charge their batteries or something like that. Now I like good motivational speeches as much as anyone else, but they're not a panacea.
I've heard people complain, "Oh, those motivational speeches
never last." Well, neither do showers; still it's not a bad
idea to take a shower fairly often.
But managers, you need to do something in addition to scheduling motivational speeches. You need to get motivated, too.
If you really want to motivate your employees, there are all kinds of data available on the subject. And not all of it is the esoteric musings of academia.
Let me point out one helpful piece of data that most managers ignore: Good work, in and of itself, can be motivating.
That's right, people enjoy doing work. You don't need eighty-six incentive plans, a motivational speech every week, and lots of other kinds of tricks in order to make people feel more motivated. All those things are secondary to the work itself.
There is an ugly bargain that goes on in many American workplaces, and it goes something like this: "I work just hard enough so that they won't fire me, and they pay me just enough so that I won't quit." Given that, is it any wonder why we have productivity problems?
Here is another ugly phrase, related to the first, that is all too true: "A job not worth doing is a job not worth doing well." A lot of workers - and even managers - have figured that one out.
 So, how do you make work motivational? You design good jobs.
And how do you do that? The research on this is very clear. It boils down to about five different elements:
1. There should be variety in the job. This means, managers, that for boring jobs, you should shift tasks among employees or make even little changes in the routine so the employees have something to look forward to. Whenever I ask people what makes for a good job, they say things like, "Boy, this one job I had, I never knew what was going to happen next - I just liked going in and having a little excitement every day." There are exceptions, of course; some people want to do the boring things over and over again, but they are a small minority.
Listen to this steelworker describe his job, one without variety:
"I'm a dying breed. A laborer. Strictly muscle work...pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down...it's dying...if (a worker) creates this thing - let's say, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel - a thousand times a year? Don't you think that that would dull even Michelangelo's mind? Or if Da Vinci had to draw his anatomical charts thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, eighty, ninety, a hundred times a day? Don't you think that would bore even Da Vinci?" The quote is from Studs Terkel's 1970 book Working, and it captures the tragedy of mind-wasting work.
2. Employees need to have what the experts call task identity. What this means is that if you give people whole jobs to do, they will feel a lot more satisfaction in doing them. It's more exciting for someone to build a kitchen cabinet than it is for him to put the screw in on the handle that goes on the door of the cabinet.
There is a revolution in work design going on right now in America because manufacturers have, for three generations, tried to design thinking out of the job and have forced human beings to repeat little, minute, stupid tasks over and over again as if they were extensions of machines. That doesn't work anymore. We're starting to give people whole jobs that they can be proud of, but we've got a lot further to go.
3. In addition to variety and task identity, something called task significance is necessary. Task significance is when people feel that what they are doing is important. You can see how closely related this is to task identity.
This is where leadership comes in. Even important jobs can become unimportant when routine takes over. You hear it regularly: "Oh, I'm just a secretary. Oh, I'm just a spot welder. Oh, I'm just a manager. Oh, I'm just a bureaucrat." I suppose it's possible for Mr. Bush to wake up and say, "Oh, well, I'm just the president," because when routine sets in, the significance of the work is lost. With good leadership, there are no "just a's" out there, because we are reminded that every job counts. Employees have to believe that to feel good about work and to feel motivated.
4. A job also needs feedback. People want to know the results of their work. But feedback goes beyond that.
Even a boring task can become pretty exciting when you've got feedback going for you. When I watch bowlers and I see them roll a ball, it does not look essentially exciting. The bowler takes three or four simple steps and then rolls this heavy piece of round ebonite down a lane.
So, what makes it a game? The only reason it's a game is because you get to keep score; in other words, you get feedback on your skill.
Imagine this scene: you go bowling with some friends, and
you are looking forward to a good time, perhaps even thinking,
"Hey, this might be my night." So, you bowl your first line,
and as that ball rolls down that alley, you like the way it
sounds, and it looks like it's heading right for the pocket.
You start to get pretty pumped up about that.
Just before the ball hits the pocket, though, a piece of canvas drops in front of the pins. The ball scoots under the canvas, you hear all this racket, but you don't see many of the pins fall. Now what would you do? You'd probably run up to the manager and say, "Hey, what is this! I rolled that ball down there and this piece of canvas came down and I couldn't even see what happened."
What would you do if the manager replied, "Now, don't get excited, sir. Around here we don't keep score. We just bowl for the love of the game"? You probably wouldn't bowl there very often.
Obviously, this manager has it all wrong - there is no game without feedback. Work is not fun when nobody is keeping score or when the only time you get to keep score is when you see your mistakes. Workers need feedback on their successes too.
5. The last thing you need to help people like their work and be motivated to work is something that experts call autonomy. The workers themselves call this freedom or independence.
The other day at a factory I toured, someone said, "It's fun to work when you're running your own show."
Everyone has a need to feel like he is running his own show from early on in life. What's one of the first ten words that usually comes out of a baby's mouth? After "mama" and "dada" and "cup" and "ball," it won't be long before the child learns to say "no!"
What is that "no" really about? It is the child asserting his will, saying, "I am somebody."
When managers kill the drive for autonomy in the workplace, there's bound to be big trouble. The drive for autonomy is so strong that people will literally starve themselves to death rather than live under a political system that they disagree with. How people manage to kill themselves on a hunger strike, I can't imagine, but there are thousands of examples of it throughout history. In a similar manner, workers will fight management rather than buckle under.
So don't micro-manage people; don't nit-pick them to death; don't lean over their shoulders. Let them get their work done. Give them good work, give them lots of variety, task significance, task identity and feedback, and then get out of their way. If you do - and you pay people appropriately - you won't have to worry about motivation for the great majority. They'll work hard, and they'll enjoy it. |
