April, 2011 | Behavior Matters! - Part 2

Month: April 2011

Today I Am Grateful For: Taxes

For two reasons…first, is the more pragmatic of the two…since I run my own business, taxes force me at least once a year to really look at where my revenue comes from and where my expenses go to (I do have a business tracking spreadsheet that is updated monthly – but not to this level of detail). . Yes – I know I should do this more than just once a year and sometimes I do. But that isn’t where my passion and thus my motivation is…so I put it off. So being the procrastinator I am, I am thankful that taxes force me to do this at least once a year…

Second, and more philosophically, I appreciate that paying taxes is what allows me to have things such as roads and laws and security and safe water/products/air and education and a host of other things. Too often we discount how much we depend on public goods and services. Yes, government could be more productive and efficient. Yes, government could be smaller in some instances. But as my economics 101 class taught me a long time ago, public goods should and need to be run in a way that they are not just for the wealthy among us.

That’s my two-cents worth anyway…

Fill in the ____ : Why communication is so important

Here is a little bit of psychology that most of us know intuitively.  People hate vacuums.   No not the kind that you use for cleaning your carpets…the kind that exist when there is an information void.

Our brains work overtime to fill in any vacuums that they encounter.

This is a good thing mostly since it has helped us survive, such as when one of our ancestors filled in this unknown,  “hmmm….I’m not sure what the growling noise is, but I bet it’s not good so I better run.”

We fill in these blanks all the time – often at a subconscious level.   In the 1930’s, Gestalt psychologist conducted a number of experiments that focused perception and filling in missing information.  They named this phenomena “the law of closure” famously demonstrated by the Kanizsa Triangle where there are no triangles or circles in the image – yet that is what we see.

 

Kanizsa Triangle

 

So What?

While filling in missing information has often helped us, it can also be very detrimental.  Take for instance what would occur if your company made a statement to employees such as “we are going through some difficult times and some changes will be announced next week.”

Not knowing what those “changes” are, people will automatically tend to fill in the blank…and what do you think they will fill it in with?  Positive thoughts on the future…probably not.

In fact, we can pretty much guarantee that different people will interpret this differently.  Some positive, some negative, and others not even registering on their radar.  Psychology shows us that ambiguous stimulus will most likely be translated into multiple perceptions by different people – based on their current emotions, past experience, personality make-up, and a variety of other factors.

People will also fill in the blanks based on information they can gather – thus, the “changes” are associated with “difficult times” so the conclusions they will draw will probably be focused on what they have seen or been part of with other changes in difficult times.

But what a company wants is to make sure that a large proportion of people are not filling in the information with negative or wrong information.  For instance, the above statement probably would cause a number of people to go back and start talking about the “layoffs” that will probably occur next week – even though nothing of the sort was said.

So what does one do?

While we can never fully make sure that everything is 100% clear and absolutely understood – we can do things to mitigate the negative aspects of this:

1.  Eliminate as much ambiguous information as possible – be as clear and complete as you can in both verbal and written communication

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Repost: Expanding on Dan Pink – How to Drive Employee Motivation

Carrot - reaching for

[This article was first published in September of 2009]

It has been interesting how much attention has been paid to Dan Pink’s latest message on motivation that was presented at TED.  The number of tweets, blogs, and other messages about this have been huge.  We ourselves highlighted the speech here on this blog a couple of weeks ago (http://wp.me/pypb9-31 ).

What I find interesting and a little worrisome, is the idea that many are taking from Dan’s presentation that all incentives (or at least most) are bad.  I disagree 100% with that concept.   I would like to expand the conversation to explore why.

The debate about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation has been going on for a long time.  The candle experiment presented by Pink was done in the 1950’s.  Deci & Ryan research from 1970’s and 1980’s suggested that extrinsic rewards can decrease intrinsic motivation.  Alfie Kohn wrote about how he thought extrinsic rewards were bad in “Punished by Rewards” in the 1990’s.   All of this research suggested a negative correlation between extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation.

However, that is not the only research out there!  Research based on both real life corporate performance data and academic experiments show a different side to this debate.

First, performance data from a number of sources points to an increase in performance when incentives are used.  Stajkovic and Luthans’ meta-analysis of 72 contingent based behavior programs found that money incentives increased performance by 23%, social recognition increased performance by 17%, and feedback increased performance by 10%.   BI, a performance improvement company, has shown increases of over 300% between a control group and an incentivized group in sales performance.

Those are hard numbers to ignore!

Also, Paul Hebert does a nice job of highlighting research by the International Society for Performance Improvement that indicate a 22% increase in performance for individual incentives and 44% for team based incentives – (see it here http://tiny.cc/nHfAj –  he also discusses some other arguments around Dan Pink’s message).

Second researchers have found that the way that incentives are structured has a significant impact on their performance as well as on the impact they have on intrinsic motivation.   Work by Eisenberger, Cameron and Pierce show that extrinsic rewards, if structured correctly, can actually increase intrinsic reward. They state, “The findings suggest that reward procedures requiring ill-defined or minimal performance convey task triviality, hereby decreasing intrinsic motivation. Reward procedures requiring specific high task performance convey a task’s personal or social significance, increasing intrinsic motivation.”  Specific to creativity, Eisenberger and Cameron “concluded that decremental effects of reward on intrinsic task interest occur under highly restricted, easily avoidable conditions and that positive effects of reward on generalized creativity are readily attainable by using procedures derived from behavior theory” [emphasis added].  Yet Dan Pink does not reference any of their work in his book (see here for some research articles that point to how extrinsic rewards can increase creativity: Eisenberger, Armeli, and Pretz, Eisenberger and Rhoades, and Eisenberger, Cameron and Pierce)

In our own work, we’ve seen that when individuals are given a choice in choosing levels of goals and subsequent rewards, they have an increased motivation to choose (and achieve) higher goals than what management would have given them.

That being said, Dan Pink has gotten the discussion flowing on this – which I think is very good.  He has also highlighted the fact that most organizations only see one lever to pull when trying to impact employee motivation – i.e. pay systems. As he points out, there are other aspects that influence employee’s motivation.  This is vital.  To improve performance, creativity, and accountability businesses need to look at more than just rewards!  I hope that this will help expand the use of other motivators!

Dan talks about Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose – these fit right into the Four Drive Model of Employee Motivation.  Autonomy and Mastery align with our Drive to Challenge and Comprehend, while purpose fit nicely with the Drive to Defend.  What Dan leaves out is the power that the Drive to Bond has on motivating employees.

Overall, I think the discussion that will result from Dan’s presentation is great, I just hope that it doesn’t get boiled down to the simple sound bite that “incentives are bad.”

UPDATE APRIL 1, 2011

Let’s start with the positive: Dan’s book has done very well and has helped focus people on the the need for looking beyond the pay system to help drive motivation throughout the business.  This is a very, very positive impact.

Now for the bad: the mantra that “incentives are bad” has been one of the larger themes to arise from the success of his book.  This is not a positive impact.   It has led to a number of non-experts jumping on the bandwagon expounding their personal belief that all pay-for-performance measures should be gotten rid of.  That incentives themselves are bad.  And that people will be 100% fully motivated if we can just figure out how to make jobs more autonomous, provide mastery and have a purpose.  Of course, this doesn’t really account for a lot of what really happens in the world as we know it.

Moving forward, I would like to propose that the discussion around this topic is good – as long as we look at all the research and at how incentives should / should not be used.  We need to look at all the tools in our tool belt – that includes things such as Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose – but also includes other things like rewards.

Let me know your thoughts – click on the comment section below!

Kurt

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