On Motivation
Why is this topic important? Very simply: To be a successful manager, you don’t just want compliance from your employees; you want their commitment; you want motivated employees.
You should read the assigned article “Motivation: The not-so-secret ingredient of high performance” as a primer. Having read that article, you should know the differences between a Theory X perspective on motivation vs. a Theory Y perspective on motivation; understand the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; be aware of the importance of team norms, management-employee communications, and employee involvement for motivation in teams; and familiar with and have critically considered the practical suggestions the article offers for enhancing employee motivation (i.e., make pay fair; demonstrate trust; make jobs more complete; encourage people to become experts at something; preserve employees’ dignity; sack slackers; avoid micro-managing; and hire self-motivated people when possible).
Having read the article, you should think critically about the extent to which these ideas—and the theories of motivation I provide thumbnail sketches of in the slides (see “MBA2015class1” for class— about motivation help you understand the reasons behind the possible motivational differences in Teams GC (the good) and HPLC (the bad)… I definitely need to come up with more memorable names for the teams for future iterations).
The goal here is to get you to think about, to imagine, ways of motivating that may not necessarily be part of your current repertoire for motivating others. Indeed, I would encourage each of you to fill out the following worksheet so you can see clearly and explicitly just what your current repertoire consists of.
Here I want to offer some brief notes to help shore up our in-class discussion of theories of motivation that are mentioned in the slides (powerpoint file “mba2015class1” on our class website: http://mgt611withmehra.weebly.com/managing-individual-differences-human-analytics.html).
Slide 1
Reminds us of the not so distant past of management theory as we know it: two very stark alternatives are presented in the form of the doctrines of Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo. The first emphasizes the importance of simplified jobs, optimized so that even minimally skilled workers can perform them as a matter of routine. Taylor thought it best that the thinking/designing of jobs be left to managers; employees were only to provide the muscle. Mayo, by contrast, focused on what he considered the peculiarly human (I, with Science, would say many animals have similar tendencies/needs, but that’s an aside) needs and tendencies of employees: they think; they have feelings; they prefer tolerance over authoritarian rule; they need rest and socialization; and so on. For an interesting take on the often airbrushed portrayals of Taylor and Mayo, see the wildly entertaining book by Mathew Stewart, “The Management Myth.” You can find an article length version of the book here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/ ). You can also look up Taylor’s manifesto “The Principles of Scientific Management” here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Scientific_Management
And here is a nice resource for learning more about Mayo’s intellectual legacy, warts and all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_Mayo
A classic statement of the Human Relations movement Mayo spawned is this tome:
http://www.amazon.com/Management-Worker-Research-Conducted-Hawthorne/dp/B0037EX1HK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427850820&sr=1-1&keywords=Dickson%2C+William+J.%2C+Roethlisberger%2C+F.+J
Echoes of these early shapers of management thought are easy to discern in contemporary corporations. The whole focus on operations and operations management, for example, is heavily indebted to Taylor; and look no further than the HR and management policies of the typical west-coast tech firm for evidence of the lasting influence of Mayo.
Slide 2-4
These slides lay out what seem to be principles of management: some are from the (now deceased) management guru; others were inductively derived, at no small expense, from the big data mining folks at Google.
If only it were so easy as saying: yes, I accept these injunctions and will follow them. It takes no genius to realize that this advice, while no doubt sagacious, can be agonizingly difficult to put into practice. “Don’t micromanage,” to take but one example, sounds obvious enough—but surely one person’s micromanaging can be another’s specific, constructive, regular feedback.
Slide 5
As slide 5 explains, the problem is psychological in nature: Understanding the underlying motives behind others’ actions/inactions can be a difficult task. There is, first, a tendency for people to believe that their privately held beliefs are more widely shared than they in-fact are (this is called the false consensus effect in psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect). Managers routinely fall prey to the false notion that their thinking is transparent to others and that others, to a greater extent than is the case, are on board with their thinking. Second, there is the fundamental attribution error (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error), a tendency that leads humans to underestimate the effects of the situation on the behavior of others. We may understand that what people do is a function of both their motives and the situational constraints they face; but when it comes to making sense of others, we tend to downplay the effects of situational constraints (e.g., John acts withdrawn at work because he is a lazy punk). Finally, we tend, as managers, and as human beings more generally, to receive poor feedback from others (it’s hard to give critical feedback to one’s boss, even if she asks for it), making it difficult to catch ourselves when we are in fact making erroneous judgments about others. There are no doubt other reasons, too, that make it difficult to follow these prescriptions—for one thing, they can sometimes be hard to maximize at the same time, so that following one piece of the recipe makes it difficult to follow another at the same time.
Slide 7-20
There are many theories of human motivation (see this lovely resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation )
Each of the theories I touch on below is covered in greater depth at the site above—I encourage you to deepen your grasp of each of these theories, and perhaps examine a few others not discussed in the slides, as a way of adding to your awareness/knowledge of alternative arguments regarding how best to motivate people. Here I focus on some that have held, at one time or another, great sway in management circles.
Slide 7 summarizes Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene model. The main insight for management is that it is not enough for them to focus only on what the theory calls “hygiene factors” (salary, supervisory relations, working conditions) because hygiene factors don’t motivate; they simply keep a person from being dissatisfied. The manager must, if she wants motivated employees, also attend to providing what the theory calls “motivators” (achievement, recognition, responsibility).
Slide 8
Covers a process theory of motivation, one that attends to the underlying cognitions that attend motivation. You can read about the theory here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectancy_theory
The slide provides a graphic summary of the theory; the boxes with quotes are what the manager trying to put the theory to work should make sure the employee clearly understands.
You can ignore slide 9
Slides 10-13
These deal with Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow. He suggests that people feel intrinsically motivated when they get in a state of flow (of the kind you get when you are in the flow playing basketball, or reading a book—a state where you feel completely involved, have a sense of timelessness, etc.). He suggests that people feel this state when in serious play, so he suggests that managers should make work more like play (see the pdf of his article “flow” under the motivation tab on our website). By this he doesn’t mean that we try to turn into comedians at work—rather, he suggests that managers should strive to create clear goals and rules, offer quick feedback, and offer challenges that are just about manageable because such challenges act like magnets for acquiring new skills. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Slide 14-16
These focus on the much researched theory of goal setting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal_setting
Slides 17-20
Caution against an excessive emphasis on goal setting, as this can blind—it is important to provide not just goals but guidelines/rules delineating what are acceptable/unacceptable means of getting there.
Slide 21 sums up the take-away for managers
You can ignore the remaining slides.
A good exercise to prepare for the exam would be to see if you can use these theories to make sense of the motivational differences between team G and team H in the Tale of Two Teams mini-case.
For example, consider Goal Setting theory. Does Elaine’s “do your best” approach to setting goals meet the criteria the theory specifies for good goals? Is Matt a micro-manager or is he not essentially following the approach set out from the perspective of Expectancy theory? What, from the perspective of the theory of Flow, might Elaine do differently if she wanted to actually get Julio in the flow instead of having him feeling anxious about the overly challenging goals that Elaine sets for him? What would Herzberg have to say about Elaine’s approach to management? What about the practical bits of advice offered in the “Motivation: The not-so-secret ingredient of high performance” piece? Is Elaine following that advice?
Having gone through this topic, you should have under your belt a clear sense of which approaches tend to work and why for motivating people. Don’t just rely on your instincts. Benefit from the theories of motivation and the guidance they have to offer.
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