Watch this amazing animation from RSA illustrating a talk by Dan Pink, a theme also covered in his book Drive.

Pink’s hypothesis is that the path to true motivation comes from within, and the desire of a person to achieve autonomy, mastery and purpose, without which man feels incomplete.

For individual inner peace, that’s a great credo, but for businesses, how can they help foster the behaviours they want to see from their workforce. How for example can a company encourage its staff to be more environmentally friendly at work? This requires instilling a collective sense of purpose and responsibility, a shared vision, and individual autonomy, mastery and purpose has very little to do with it. Incentives are great for those little nudges in the right direction that can result in a major shift in corporate behaviour.

An interesting concept from Gwilym Davies – “World Barista Champion” – is the dis-loyalty card. Designed to encourage diversity, rather than conformity, it offers a refreshing twist on the tired loyalty cards of most coffee chains. Rather than slavishly visiting the same old coffee shop in order to earn a free coffee, the dis-loyalty card encourages the shopper to frequent a number of otherwise unaffiliated establishments.

Joined-up thinking like this by small businesses and local communities is the answer to the bland homogenisation of our high streets by large retail chains. The large retailers know that loyalty cards are the way to embed habits and repeated behaviours, but the same logic can also be extended to less commercially driven enterprises. See also The Crouch End Project for how local retailers can use the power of customer loyalty to support local businesses.

In business, decisions are often made by the person who takes home the biggest paycheck. This is known as the HiPPO problem (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). As this article states:

“HIPPO is the high level manager who comes to your project at the last moment and offers an opinion on what to include to make the project a success. And you must consider it, even if the idea is out of scope, past deadline or [...] crazy”

People who throw their weight around without regard for the considered opinions of those below them on the org chart, create toxic workplaces. Eventually, people will start deferring more and more decisions to the HiPPO, rather than seeking creative solutions for themselves that may get overruled on a whim. And of course, it continues to feed to ego of HiPPOs to think they are geniuses (otherwise why else would they be paid so much?) who can turn their instinctive insight onto whatever they rest their eyeballs on.

All of this leads to a culture of complacency for most and the feeding of rampant egos for few. This state of affairs may be hidden or ignored when times are good – as Pixar founder Ed Catmull says, “success hides problems” – but does not bode well for long term success. Motivation systems that continually reward the same behaviours, or only reward the superstars, fuel complacency and egotism, reinforcing the toxic workpace.

At the Harvard Business Review, Peter Sims thinks that Google, who he thinks are at a ‘pivotal moment in its history’ could learn from Pixar, where processes are in place to ensure that success doesn’t breed complacency.

“what Pixar has that Google does not is a culture where the fear of complacency is a strong motivator, where new problems are identified, discussed, and addressed openly and honestly, all of which requires humility”

Humility of top executives, and active steps to prevent complacency, resting on laurels, are key tenets of the Pixar approach, and ones that all companies should embrace. Motivation programs can be used to help stir up new ways of working, and help ensure that the best ideas win, regardless of where they came from.

Or as that old warhorse Winston Churchill once said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”

“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
Albert Einstein

Usually motivation is driven by rewards for success. But here’s a site, Lose it or Lose it, that helps people to lose weight by punishing them (in the form of lost money) for failing to achieve the targets they set themselves. It’s choosing sticks over carrots

It’s an odd premise, especially since users must stake their own money which they ‘win’ back by meeting the weight-loss objectives they set themselves over the 10 week program. The theory is that by declaring publicly the goal (which requires 2 or more ‘accountability’ friends to verify your weigh-ins and support you) and putting something tangible at risk, ie hard cash, you are more likely to achieve them.

But a counter argument is that announcing your plans may make you less motivated. For some people, declaration of action can provide a “premature sense of completeness”, which then results in a reduction in the drive to achieve those plans.

Lose it or lose it is an interesting experiment in try to externalise a process of self-motivation by creating a game-like condition. Self-motivation is a fascinating subject area, full of the little cheats and rules we set ourselves to try and compel us to achieve the goals we desire.

There’s a fair amount of discussion around at the moment about motivation and incentives, largely inspired by the recent book “Drive” by Dan Pink (of which more another time).

Paul Hebert at the i2i blog has got an interesting observation, that what Dan Pink regards as motivation is not the same as what drives behaviour within companies.

So how do we at IncentiveDirect define motivation and incentives? To us, motivation is about personal desires and drives. Incentives are about behaviour and performance.

Incentive programs drive behaviours, provide direction, and they can help feed motivation.
But motivation, like The Force, only comes from within.