Topic Paper 8 for Pink Paper

Topic Paper 8: “The Puzzle of Motivation”

Spencer Walston

Extrinsic motivators are how most business reward their employees today. They get commissions, pay raises, and bonuses based on their performance. Intrinsic motivators are the reasons behind what motivates other than tangible goods such as money. For example giving people freedom to do what they want. More business are working towards providing intrinsic bonuses because science has proven it is better. However extrinsic motivators still are the most predominant.

Business still believe that money is the main motivator. If you offer employees more money to finish the task they will do it quicker and better. The candle experiment has proven this to be false. Intrinsic motivators such as freedom and more relaxed work places are what are actually motivating the employees. Employees that are given intrinsic bonuses are more likely to think outside the box.

The first element of the new approach is “Autonomy”, is the urge to direct our own lives. Second is “Mastery” and that is the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Lastly we have “Purpose”. This is defined as the want to do what we do in the service of something larger than our selves.

The idea of FedEx Days, 20% time, and ROWE are not utopian thoughts. This is allowing intrinsic motivators in the work places such as giving employees 20% of the work time to work on anything they would like and the idea of Results Only Work Environment. For example think of Microsoft Encarta. In the mid-90s Microsoft started Encarta an encyclopedia provider. They paid their employees really well but they could not compete with Wikipedia. The people that work for Wiki are not paid and they just do it for fun.

The 3 key points of Pink’s talk are 20th century forms of motivating work still but on a much smaller scale. Next is “If then rewards” can destroy creativity. Lastly the secret to high performance is not rewards but offering the intrinsic...