ZenSRC

A friend of mine sent me a link to a great video about motivation, entitled “The surprising science of motivation” by Dan Pink. The video focuses on what it takes to motivate people in a workplace and contrasts mechanical labor intensive jobs versus cognitive labor intensive jobs.

What I particularly like about this video is how Dan analyzes the problem of motivating workers who spend their time doing creative, cognitive work. The science says that once you “pay people enough to take money off of the table” then there are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction:

• Autonomy – A person’s ability to self-direct his/her tasks.
• Mastery – A person’s feeling that they are learning, growing, and finding new and better ways to perform their jobs.
• Purpose – The feeling that a person has that his/her product is making the world a better place.

Most businesses still fail to realize that it isn’t about pay incentives. It’s about making people feel like they own the products they produce. This is one of those TED videos that rings true. In my own experience, I have had all three during one time or another in my career and I can honestly say that during those periods of time when I felt all three, work ceased to feel like work, and it felt more like play. Check out the video.