Beyond carrots and sticks

To motivate people, first understand what they want

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010

Managers: What do you think is the most important thing that motivates employees to do their best work? If you said bonuses, you’d be wrong. If you thought encouragement, you’re getting warmer.

Growth, progress and advancement—however you want to say it, two recent studies found that experiencing a sense of progress on a project or goal was the biggest factor in employees’ “best work days.”

What people want

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, analyzed hundreds of workers’ daily diary entries and ratings of their motivation and emotions, and found that employees mentioned “progress” in 76 percent of their best days.

“Making progress in one’s work, even incremental progress, (was) more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other workday event,” write Amabile and Steven J. Kramer in “What Really Motivates Workers” (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2010).

Author and business analyst Daniel Pink reached similar conclusions in his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

“What we need in our businesses today is a kind of updated operating system that goes beyond carrots and sticks and recognizes that human beings are not simply horses,” Pink said in a recent interview on National Public Radio. “If you treat people like people, the science shows that people will respond.”

In fact, following progress, employees’ motivation was highest when they also felt a sense of autonomy and larger purpose in their work, he found.

UBTs prove the point

Successful unit-based teams—where members can develop and contribute their own ideas and solutions—have shown the soundness of this approach.

Department manager and unit-based team co-lead Paula Lowery understood this when she took over the Adult Medicine department at Walnut Creek Medical Center (Northern California), which was plagued by poor attendance, high injury rates, grievances and missed meals and breaks.

“You have to chip away at problems,” Lowery said. “People need to see that things can change.” By making steady, visible progress—building trust and confidence along the way—the team dramatically improved attendance, missed meals and workplace safety in 2009.

Likewise, Colorado’s Arapahoe After-hours clinic saw engagement and interaction spike when their unit-based team became self-directed in 2008. Team members now decide everything from scheduling to in-service planning; Family Medicine manager and team co-lead Liz Fitzharris steps in only to do those things that the frontline workers can’t—reviews, corrective action and discipline.

"We really became a team like never before,” labor co-lead Becky Sassaman, RN, said. “It became a lot more conversations, more peer accountability, more interaction. We have gained so much congenialness … It gave us the opportunity to do what’s important to us while staying within line with KP’s values. People get really engaged when they have the opportunity to impact."