Should engagement and intrinsic motivation matter to me?
If you are in the commercial nuclear power industry, you've heard of a document supporting an engaged and thinking organization, SOER 10-02, and you know it's basically the story of some of the best plants and owners in the business having problems because the leadership team was not engaging the workforce adequately. Actually by now, if you are a leadership team member you should have been through training on each of the recommendations! Or, perhaps you teach part of it, like I do (recommendation 2b.) So, how do we get the workforce engaged, when it's hard enough to have an engaged leadership team?
This better not be the first time you are hearing about Daniel Pink
From the moment I read the words, "intrinsic motivation" in Daniel Pink's book, Drive, I was hooked. What motivates people to do anything in today's world? I've actually heard someone say on a conference call with other HU people, "How can I get someone to do something the way I want them to do it?" It wasn't supposed to sound as rhetorical as it did, but the person was about as frustrated as one could get in our role. You need to find out what is motivating people to work the way they do in your organization, and you will not surprisingly find out that what gets reinforced gets done. Yes, you have to be somewhat of an expert on getting the pulse of the culture and the climate of your workforce to figure this out, but the more you pay attention to it, the easier it becomes. According to Daniel Pink, within an incentive type culture, "reward narrows our focus and restricts our possibility."
Google excellence
So, is it better to just hire people that you can identify as intrinsically motivated? Actually, yes, but how would you find them or even possibly figure that out? Let me share a personal story: A couple of years ago I went on a City Manager's tour of the Googleplex in California where they ushered us to a beautiful, modern-age training room where we learned of an extremely valuable short list of Google's secrets to growing and sustaining success. For example, having a business plan out to 75 years plus from today was on the list, they want to be the entire planet's source of searchable media, and the compelling list went on and on. One item included on that lists sticks with me today: hiring practices. Not every company gets 100s of resume's each day (1 every 25 seconds or so) to sift through, but you can believe that each person working for Google is a talent, and has an awesome level of intrinsic motivation to perform their job and work in that motivating environment. Also, it may be interesting to note that the speaker defined "old" as anyone over 35. Why would I mention this? Maybe "older" people aren't ready to explore radical change, or maybe it's a new form of ageism. Click here to link to Google's current cultural statements (which are similar to the list shared with us), and here for a video on what it's like to work there.
Shaming to control behavior? Yes, shaming.
One of my favorite books and podcast series (they have a movie, too!), "Freakonomics" spends a lot of time exploring the "hidden side of everything," which really is uncovering two things, what is motivating people (incentives) and outcomes, including the unanticipated ones. Hours and hours of my daily 3-in-35s have been spent with Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. They are a class act research team, and the audio journalism they do is difficult to parallel. My favorite episode deals with how they revealed solutions to a jaywalking problem handled by an out-of-the-box gutsy mayor in Bogota, Columbia. Click here for their episode called, "Riding the Herd Mentality." This gets right to the core on how to change someone's behavior for their own good: you shame them.
Get them to C.A.R.E.
Click here for the "X Model of Employee Engagement" video. Decide where you are on the "X" and where the people you pay attention to at work each day show up. Engaged, Almost Engaged, Hamsters, Crash and Burners, or outright Disengaged? Do you think this even matters in the schema of your work place? I do. It may be up to you to recommend ways to get to the apex. Leaders need to C.A.R.E. Coach, Align, Recognize, Engage. And we are back to the SOER 10-02 initiative - Engagement.
So, yes, engagement and intrinsic motivation should matter to you, and controlling behavior with shaming actually does work, however, not easy to do at all - I always believed we should leave people we coach with as much dignity as possible. This is part of the new picture of Human Performance.
More links to follow up from NEI.org:Simplified and Enhanced Management Observation Techniques.First-Line Supervisor Training and Development