I left off last time with Managers, Monkeys and China. Let me link them together. The nature of today’s work has changed from routine task work where you follow a set process to achieve a certain result (left brain work) to where you need to use your own creativity and problem solving to reach a desired outcome (right brain). This hasn’t been so much by design but driven by technology, productivity needs, labor shortage, and most recently the epidemic.
Humans by nature are curious and self-directed. Watch a child develop before entering the educational systems and after. Early on we are driving parents crazy always asking ‘Why”? We can build something out of nothing, have imaginary friends and so on. Parents, then educators, then management/work environment beat a lot of those characteristics out of us. All along we are motivated by different things in our external world. However, the strongest motivation is intrinsically just by ‘the nature of the beast’. Our system is getting better at fostering our natural and self-directedness nature but in most work environments is hits a brick wall.
Back to the monkeys. Last time I mention psychologist Harry Harlow research where he placed puzzles in monkeys’ cages for a behavioral study and was surprised to find that the primates successfully solved them in a day without any outside influences. Harlow saw no logical reason for them to do so. What was their motivation? Their survival didn’t depend on it. The monkey’s didn’t receive any rewards nor avoid any punishments for their work. Apparently, the monkeys solved the puzzles simply because they had a desire to do so. As to their motivation, Harlow’s theory: “The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward.” The monkeys performed because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it, and the joy of the task was its own reward. Further experiments found that offering external rewards to solve these puzzles didn’t improve performance. In fact, external rewards disrupted task completion.
Think about this in the context of the way jobs are designed and employees receive feedback on their performance. Work in the U.S. has become more creative (right brain work) less routine, more self-directed and I believe also more enjoyable. Traditional reward systems impair this right brain work. Job design that taps into an individual’s natural curiosity and provide goal accomplishment tap into intrinsic motivation. What’s the lesson? If you want motivated employees, you can design a program to try and motivate them extrinsically (short term) or tap into intrinsic motivation and look at how jobs are designed, and people’s performance is evaluated and not spend the money.
Where do the Chinese fit into this discussion? In 2021 there were 1.06 million Chinese students studying for a degree abroad, the majority in US universities advanced programs. This trend has been going on for a significant number of years. With so many people with advanced degree’s why does China steal our intellectual property? When I spent time in China visiting manufacturing plants a couple things were very obvious. First, jobs and everyday life is designed to follow ‘the rules’. Highly educated engineers could reengineer anything but were at a loss to be creative or innovative. Manufacturing there doesn’t rely on re-inventing how to accomplish something better; they throw people and equipment at it. There entire culture drives natural curiosity out early in life. China doesn’t invent new things they reengineer what other countries invent because they don’t allow the natural curiosity in humans to develop.
Remember the story about the how the reward system in a ‘traditional call center’ went to the dark side. Here’s a different look at the same function only a ‘redesigned’ call center. The new term is ‘Homeshoring’. You hire people within your national border that want to work from ‘home’, you provide them the training but more importantly the authority to resolve on the spot most of customers issues. they are not rewarded for number of calls taken or how long it takes to resolve issue. An interesting job design along with how they are tapping people’s intrinsic motivation. Most of the people in these jobs are retired individuals. It will be interesting to see how successful these ‘new call centers’ are.
Here’s a final story that incorporates a couple of thoughts. How can informal incentive systems morph along side formal ones and what can happen when jobs are designed and managed to ‘just follow a set process’.
Most production-oriented companies have production, quality, etc. goals. They put in place incentives for employees to accomplish the goals and get X reward. Sometimes goals and rewards are based by shifts, production lines, or teams or company. The informal or dark side of this I have observed too many times is work teams or production lines etc. will establish informal competition against each other for the recognition of ‘being the best’. I was working with a CEO of a manufacturing plant who couldn’t figure out why production, quality, and customer satisfaction numbers were falling after installing a new reward system had shown so much success early on. He asked me to figure out what happened. Here’s what I found out. One line supervisor told his crew that if they beat everyone else in meeting the goals, he would host a beer and catfish fry at his house. As bad luck would have it his crew won, and the eating and drinking was held. At the fish fry someone on the crew ask him, “if we do it again will you do this again”? Of course, he said Yes. As everyone else n the production floor found out about this ‘grand bargain’ they started to sabotage each other’s work in subtle but effective ways. The incentive system turned from company production goals to ‘beating the other teams.’ I think another moral of this story is that people involved in ‘mindless task work’ will try to make it engaging for themselves. When you think about workplace accidents and work errors, I think the accidents and errors most often occur because the job design does not ‘engage the employee mentally’ in their job.
Goal setting and reward systems are not bad in themselves. When you think you need one ask yourself why you think that. Then if you want to go ahead think them through before implementing them and evaluated constantly.