This interview with Daniel Kahneman talks about his Nobel award winning work on Prospect Theory. There is some very interesting insights into how people behave in a risk vs reward type situation. This has some implications for incentives and motivation. How do we need to structure our reward models in response to this?
by Timblair
My four year old son was playing trains downstairs with two of his friends last week. It was going great until one of the friends somehow ended up with 5 train cars while my son only had 4. This sent my four year old into a tizzy in which he stomped out of the room and sulked on the floor in the kitchen.
“He has more than me.” was the response I got when I asked him what was wrong.
So trying to think quickly and forgetting that I was dealing with a four year old, I asked him if he had been having fun playing with four trains before he realized that his friend had five? “Yes…but it’s not fair. He won’t share and he has more.”
My equally “way-too-old” for a four year old response was, “but right now you have none – which is more fun, playing with four or playing with none?” I thought I had him here….
He looked at me with a quizzical stare and held up his hand with all five fingers out – “Five!” he said in response with 100% conviction. Ahh yes, I’m dealing with a four year old mind.
This is 4 of the most interesting minutes I’ve spent in a long time…
What are the implications for this?
What happens when something doesn’t happen?
No, that was not a rhetorical question.
Do we recognize the importance of something because it didn’t happen or do we dismiss it since it really never happened?
Wally Bock in his Three Star Leadership letter from 12/31/10 wrote about Peter de Jager who was the first person to identify that computers might have a problem with the year 2000 and how their dates were formatted. One of the lessons that Wally takes from this is,
“Peter de Jager Lesson Nr 1: It may be glorious to ride to the rescue after a crisis hits, but it is far more productive to head off a crisis and create a non-event.”
We are a society that loves the rescuer but often derides the person who makes the non-event. Think about it…de Jager was blasted as being a fear monger and spreading a bunch of hype (see some of the response right after Y2K here) for his warnings. We don’t know how big of an impact Y2K would have had without the massive upfront work done on it… and yes it might have been overkill…but again, we don’t really know. That is core of the problem.
Every year people make New Years resolutions. For too many people, those resolutions are too soon forgotten and ignored.
To a degree – yes! I believe that it is about how we channel our motivation and keep it going.
I believe that most people are highly motivated to achieve their New Years resolutions whether it focus on weight loss or being a better parent. Just as we are motivated to achieve certain goals at work, and yet often fail. The problem is usually not in the initial stages where everyone is excited about the new resolution or goal (go to a gym in the next week or two and see how crowded it is). The problem occurs when that initial excitement wains, and we fall back into the comfortable and routine. We might try to regain that edge after one or two fall-off the wagon episodes, but pretty soon we tend to just ignore it or forget about it all together.
What we need is to have a motivational engine that keeps us going. We need to fill that motivational engine with the right type of gas and make sure that the engine is tuned up and ready to go. We need to make sure that we have enough gas to refill when it starts running low. We need to know when to get it tuned up and change the oil. We need to make sure that we can fix it when it breaks down.
I think all of our motivational engines are within us. It is the scheduled maintenance and filling it up that we so often lag on. What type of gas do you run on? Is it a personal motivation? Does it require a reward? Is it social? Does it need the turbo power of passion? Is it a mixture of all four?
In order to achieve our goals we need to understand this about us and put elements in place to ensure that we fill our tank regularly and do all the scheduled maintenance required.
What about you – what’s your motivational fuel for 2011?
I found this slideshare presentation from Stanford very interesting. 7, 3,2, and 9 are my favorites (in that order). What are yours?
This past summer I was conducting a team building program for a company that does some fantastic work helping other companies work more effectively. We conducted an event that had teams create sixty-second commercials that highlighted who they were, what value they brought and why somebody would use their services. We consciously give them a lot of information and very limited time to make their commercials. They had to do rush to get this done.
We told them that they needed to work together, be creative, and focus on quality…we emphasized how the little details matter. As you will see, the little things really do matter.
One team accidentally taped over their commercial and had a little over sixty seconds of film that showed feet walking…
We took this as an opportunity to show how important the small details are. We created the following video that was shown to the entire team at the video showings. It was a fantastic teachable moment and one that was a highlight of the meeting. The group discussed how easy it is for things like this to happen and what needed to be done to make sure that these types of errors didn’t crop up.
Take a look and let us know what you think…
By the way, the team re-shot the commercial and it was fantastic along with the others…shows you how adversity can bring out the best in us sometimes….
Here is a ques
tion that I’ve been asking myself all day long in between surfing the web to find out about the latest Timberwolve’s news, great after Christmas specials, the East Coast’s version of a Minnesota winter, and seeing what all my facebook buddies are up to – do the holiday’s sap employee motivation? Or at a minimum, employee energy?
I know they do for me.
Which is a problem since this is our busy time of year. Normally, I’m lucky to get Christmas day off but this year I actually got three days off – that is a record I haven’t had in over 10 years! With those three days came a lot of family celebration, festive eating, lots of visiting and much time playing with the kids.
Ok, this is a little bit of a teaser…we are in the process of doing a major overhaul of how we look at the 4-Drive Model. We’ve talked about the need to update this model before (see here and here). We are underway in getting that developed and should be launching it the first quarter of 2011.
Here is a sneak peak…the four main motivations as we’ve defined them are now renamed and constitute different elements:
1. Personal Motivation- focus on the intrinsic motivators that we have and encompasses the Drive to Challenge & Comprehend
2. Reward Motivation- focus is on the extrinsic motivators that we have and encompasses the Drive to Acquire & Achieve
3. Social Motivation- focus is on the social drives that motivate us and includes the Drive to Bond & Belong
4. Passion Motivation (this name is still being hotly debated – but for now its what we are running with)… – focus is on the motivational element of purpose and passion – including defending one’s honor and tribe
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Navigating the Complexities of Co-Workers: One Common Cognitive Error We All Make
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