Intrinsic Motivation - Page 2 of 10

Managers, Are You Sabotaging Motivation at Work?

September 25, 2014 by Janet Choi 2 Comments

Given a choice between solving puzzles for free or for pay — which would you pick?

If you want to stay motivated and solve more puzzles, the surprising thing is that you should do them for free.

In the early 1970s, psychologist Edward Deci wanted to study how money affects motivation. In one experiment, he paid one group $1 (that’s about $6 today) for each puzzle solved within three sessions, while the control group received no payment. In the middle of each session was an eight-minute free period in which people could continue puzzling, read magazines, or otherwise spend the time how they wished.

It was the paid group who chose to spend less time working on puzzles in the free periods. The extrinsic monetary reward made them lose intrinsic motivation, where the reward is the activity itself.

Over forty years later, managers still rely on the old model of dangling external rewards like money and prestige to motivate their people — but in today’s era of knowledge work, this model is increasingly misguided. If you think your people are going to continue to put in their best efforts with monetary rewards, you’re sabotaging the most powerful sources of motivation.

This One Word from Managers Helps Teams Work 48% Better

August 25, 2014 by Walter Chen Leave a Comment

In many ways, work is getting increasingly solitary.

We’re rejecting meetings with colleagues as inefficient time-wasters where nothing gets done. Technology is mediating communication, replacing face-to-face interaction. Remote work means that we’re often physically alone even when we’re working on a team.

The upshot is that even when we’re working together with colleagues on a team, it can feel like we’re working alone. Yet social contexts can be powerful motivators at work. Without them, we can get disengaged and feel like our work doesn’t matter.

It turns out that, even in the absence of working physically together with a team, it’s possible to evoke the power of social context with one single word. Stanford psychologists discovered that saying this one word inspired individuals to work an incredible 48% harder by using social context to fuel intrinsic motivation.

How Tony Hsieh Inspired Long-Term Motivation to Grow Zappos Culture

August 6, 2014 by Janet Choi 2 Comments

In 2005, Zappos was on track to beat its yearly sales goal of $300 million.

But that was just the beginning. Before Zappos became the household name it is today, CEO Tony Hsieh held a long-term vision for the company that went beyond the gross merchandise numbers. His ambitious goal to hit $1 billion in sales by 2010 was part of a larger plan.

In a remarkable email update Hsieh wrote in 2005 to Zappos investors, employees, and partners, he explained:

Rather than maximizing short-term profits, we’re taking a long-term view and focusing on building the business for the long haul. We’ve grown quickly over the past 5 years, but we are just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

But it’s not the numbers that are the most exciting… It’s the opportunity to build a company culture and consumer brand that is centered around the service, not the shoes or the handbags.

One of the most captivating things about this email is to actually see the seeds of Zappos’s distinctive company culture germinating — especially knowing that the vision that Hsieh lays out in this decade-old email has come to pass, and then some.

So how did Hsieh actually translate his vision for Zappos into reality and resist the siren song of those short-term profits? How did he corral his employees to stick with him for the long haul? The elements are all there in that email.

Why Manage the Good, When You Can Coach the Best?

August 4, 2014 by Janet Choi Leave a Comment

“Thanks for pushing me.”

That’s what Kawhi Leonard — at twenty-two, the third youngest Finals MVP in NBA history — told his coach, Gregg Popovich, during the celebratory hullabaloo of this year’s Spurs championship.

To developer Kevin Lamping, Leonard’s simple utterance of gratitude is a meaningful example of the power of coaching, the difference between “managing the good” and “coaching the best.” Their multimillion-dollar salaries, Kevin observes, isn’t quite enough for players to motivate and develop themselves. It’s that critical outside perspective that helps push, challenge, and support you to improve, which is why elite performers from Olympic athletes to opera singers at the top of their fields still have coaches.

Of course the best bosses take time to develop their people. It’s even been proven by Google with its extensive analysis of over 10,000 observations about managers across over 100 variables. Their first and foremost evidence-based rule of good management? Be a good coach.

Then why isn’t coaching more often treated like part of the manager’s job rather than a nice extracurricular activity?

What You Don’t Know About Internal Motivation May Harm Your Career

July 25, 2014 by Janet Choi 2 Comments

So you want to build a billion-dollar company, and it’s because you want to make people’s lives better by solving a problem while hitting it big, rich, and famous. Sounds like a winning combo of incentives to drive you to achieve startup success.

It’s not like both motives can’t coexist. Humans, complex beings that we are, walk around with a jumble of intentions, impulses, and aspirations in our heads — instead of one clearcut reason for why we do things.

The thing is, you would think that having multiple motives would result in, well, more motivational power. When you can hit two goals with one activity, don’t you just have more incentive to do the activity? If you want that promotion because you get to expand your skillset and increase your prestige, doesn’t that help drive you even harder to go for it?

There’s one problem. There’s a tricky truth about motivation that might be preventing your best performance.

95% of Managers Follow an Outdated Theory of Motivation

July 14, 2014 by Walter Chen 51 Comments

What, by a long shot, is the most important motivator for employees at work? Is it money, pressure, or praise?

Typically managers believe the idea that pressure makes diamonds. The thinking is that if you want exceptional performance, you align employee objectives with end-of-year bonuses for hitting certain milestones and then employees will turn up their work ethic to reach them.

Long-held conventional wisdom on management dies hard. That’s because it’s based on gut instinct and superstition — and managerial understanding of motivation is no different. A massive 95% of managers are wrong about what the most powerful motivator for employees at work.

Not only that, they’re thinking about employee motivation fundamentally wrong.

Do You Take Work For Granted or With Gratitude?

April 23, 2014 by Janet Choi 5 Comments

When I first joined iDoneThis, I hated our weekly meetings. They were demoralizing and amorphous. We rambled on, drowning in circuitous discussions about product that led nowhere. The meetings became a chore, making us feel like sulky high school students waiting for the bell to ring.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner noticed a similar bad meeting phenomenon of tending to “devolve into a round robin of complaints.” His unconventional solution was to change up the meeting format by promoting something you wouldn’t expect: gratitude.

The Work Will Always Be There

December 12, 2013 by Janet Choi Leave a Comment

When we think about our work and what we have to do, it’s almost always about pushing. Push yourself, push harder, push through the pain. But pushing won’t get you through every door.

When you take a look at the routines and rituals of super-productive people, they often turn out not to be about pushing at all, but pulling and drawing energy back into yourself. These recharging routines are about creating “me-time” — not in some selfish, diva way, but in an effort to care for and re-center yourself, to protect at least some of your time from being dictated by others.

Me-time routines are renewable fuel, a sustainable antidote to burnout and life as a work vampire.

Dr Seuss’s Surprising Strategy For Success

December 11, 2013 by James Clear Leave a Comment

In 1960, two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager.

The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House. The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss. Cerf challenged Dr. Seuss that he wouldn’t be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words.

Dr. Seuss took the bet and won. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since its publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.

At first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story — and the lessons in it can help you become more creative and stick to better habits over the long run.

Do the Painful Things First

November 20, 2013 by James Clear Leave a Comment

Before I became an entrepreneur, I went to business school. While studying for my MBA, there was one lesson I learned which has proved to be useful over and over again in my life.

I was sitting in a marketing class, and we were discussing ways to design a wonderful customer experience. The goal is not merely to provide decent service but to delight the customer. Behavioral scientists have discovered that one of the most effective ways to create a delightful experience is to stack the painful parts of the experience early in the process.

Psychologically, we prefer experiences that improve over time. That means it’s better for the annoying parts of a purchase to happen early in the experience. Furthermore, we don’t enjoy it when painful experiences are drawn out or repeated.

Here are some examples:

If you’re at the doctor’s office, it’s better to combine the pain of waiting into one segment. The wait will feel shorter to your brain if you spend 20 minutes in the waiting room rather than 10 minutes in the waiting room and 10 minutes in the exam room.
People enjoy all-inclusive vacations because they pay one lump sum at the beginning (the pain), and the rest of the trip is divided into positive experiences, excursions, and parties. In the words of my professor, all-inclusive vacations “segment the pleasure and combine the pain.”
If you’re a professional service provider (lawyer, insurance agent, freelancer, etc.), it’s better to give the bad news to your clients first and finish with the good news. Clients will remember an experience more favorably if you start weak but finish on a high note, rather than starting strong and ending poorly.

These examples got me thinking. If you can make a customer experience more delightful, why not make your life experiences more delightful?

Here are some ideas for how to take advantage of the way your brain processes painful and annoying experiences and use that knowledge to live a better life.

Managers, Are You Sabotaging Motivation at Work?

This One Word from Managers Helps Teams Work 48% Better

How Tony Hsieh Inspired Long-Term Motivation to Grow Zappos Culture

Why Manage the Good, When You Can Coach the Best?

What You Don’t Know About Internal Motivation May Harm Your Career

95% of Managers Follow an Outdated Theory of Motivation

Do You Take Work For Granted or With Gratitude?

The Work Will Always Be There

Dr Seuss’s Surprising Strategy For Success

Do the Painful Things First

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