RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Summary

The video script explores the complexities and nuances of human motivation, challenging the conventional wisdom that rewards and punishments directly correlate with performance. It discusses surprising research findings from MIT and Madurai, India, which suggest that high rewards can actually hinder performance in tasks requiring cognitive skills. The script argues for the importance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as key motivators, rather than monetary incentives. Examples from companies like Atlassian and movements like Linux and Wikipedia illustrate the power of self-direction and the desire for meaningful work, advocating for a shift in organizational thinking towards valuing intrinsic motivators over traditional carrot-and-stick approaches.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The science of motivation is complex and surprising, often contradicting traditional beliefs about rewards and punishments.
• 💰 High rewards can lead to poorer performance, especially when tasks require cognitive skills beyond simple mechanical ones.
• 📚 A study at MIT showed that higher monetary incentives did not improve performance on tasks requiring rudimentary cognitive skills.
• 🌏 The findings from the MIT study were replicated in Madurai, India, where higher rewards also resulted in worse performance.
• 💼 Money is a motivator, but its most effective use is to pay enough to remove financial concerns from an individual's mind, allowing them to focus on the work itself.
• 🚀 Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction in the workplace.
• 🏢 Companies like Atlassian encourage autonomy by allowing employees to work on any project they choose for a day, fostering innovation.
• 🎼 Mastery is a strong motivator, as people naturally seek to improve their skills and find satisfaction in doing so.
• 🌐 Examples like Linux, Apache, and Wikipedia show that highly skilled individuals are willing to contribute significant time and effort without monetary reward for the sake of challenge, mastery, and contribution.
• 💡 The 'purpose motive' is becoming increasingly important in organizations, as it not only improves the work experience but also attracts better talent.
• 🌟 When profit motives become detached from purpose motives, it can lead to ethical issues and subpar products and services.
• 🛠 Successful companies, regardless of their profit status, are driven by a strong sense of purpose and the desire to make a positive impact.

Q & A

What is the main topic discussed in the video script?

The main topic discussed in the video script is the science behind human motivation, particularly how rewards and punishments affect behavior in different contexts.

How does the speaker describe the science of motivation?

The speaker describes the science of motivation as 'really surprising' and 'a little bit freaky', indicating that it challenges common assumptions and is not as predictable as one might think.

What was the purpose of the study conducted at MIT?

The purpose of the MIT study was to examine the effects of different levels of monetary rewards on performance, particularly in tasks that require cognitive skills beyond simple mechanical tasks.

What did the MIT study find about the relationship between rewards and performance for tasks requiring cognitive skills?

The MIT study found that for tasks requiring rudimentary cognitive skills, a larger reward led to poorer performance, which contradicts the common belief that higher rewards always lead to better performance.

Why did the researchers decide to replicate the experiment in Madurai, rural India?

The researchers decided to replicate the experiment in Madurai, rural India, to test whether the unexpected results were specific to the MIT student population or if they held true in a different cultural and economic context where the monetary rewards would be more significant.

What were the results of the replicated experiment in rural India?

In the replicated experiment in rural India, the results showed that people offered the medium reward did no better than those offered the small reward, and those offered the top reward performed the worst, further supporting the finding that higher incentives can lead to worse performance.

According to the script, what are the three factors that science shows lead to better performance and personal satisfaction?

The three factors that science shows lead to better performance and personal satisfaction are autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

What is Atlassian's approach to encouraging innovation among its developers?

Atlassian encourages innovation by giving its developers one day every quarter to work on any project they want, in any way they want, with anyone they want, and then presenting the results in a fun and relaxed setting.

Why do people engage in activities like playing musical instruments, even when they don't directly benefit from them?

People engage in activities like playing musical instruments for the enjoyment and satisfaction of getting better at something, which is a form of mastery that provides intrinsic motivation.

What is the 'purpose motive' and why is it becoming more important in organizations?

The 'purpose motive' refers to the desire of organizations to have a transcendent purpose beyond just making a profit. It is becoming more important because it enhances the work experience, attracts better talent, and leads to better outcomes in terms of products and services.

How does the speaker suggest we should treat people in organizations to build better work lives?

The speaker suggests treating people like people, not like 'horses', by moving past the ideology of carrot and stick motivators and instead focusing on autonomy, mastery, and purpose to build better work lives.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 The Surprising Science of Motivation

The speaker delves into the fascinating and often counterintuitive science of motivation, challenging the conventional wisdom that rewards and punishments are the key drivers of behavior. They discuss a study conducted at MIT that revealed an unexpected outcome: higher rewards led to worse performance in tasks requiring even basic cognitive skills. This finding contradicts the traditional economic model and has been replicated in various settings, including rural India, where significant monetary incentives paradoxically resulted in poorer performance. The speaker emphasizes that while rewards can motivate for simple tasks, they are less effective for complex, creative work, and suggests that the best use of money is to remove it as a concern, allowing individuals to focus on their work.

05:02

🌟 Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose: The True Drivers of Performance

This paragraph explores three key factors that genuinely enhance performance and personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the desire to be self-directed, which traditional management styles often stifle. The speaker cites Atlassian's innovative approach, allowing developers one day of complete autonomy each quarter to work on any project they choose, which has led to significant improvements and innovations. Mastery is the human drive to improve skills and knowledge, which is evident in hobbies like playing musical instruments. The speaker uses examples like the open-source movement, where highly skilled individuals voluntarily contribute their time and expertise for free, driven by the desire for challenge and mastery. Purpose is also highlighted as a critical motivator, with organizations increasingly seeking a transcendent goal that goes beyond profit. The speaker argues that when profit becomes detached from purpose, it leads to subpar outcomes, whereas a strong sense of purpose can inspire exceptional work and contribute positively to the world.

10:07

🛠 Rethinking Work: Beyond Carrot and Stick

The final paragraph calls for a rethinking of traditional motivational strategies, advocating for a human-centric approach that moves beyond the simplistic 'carrot and stick' ideology. The speaker suggests that by embracing the science of motivation and focusing on autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we can create work environments that not only improve individual well-being but also have the potential to make the world a better place. The paragraph concludes with the idea that people are not just profit maximizers but also purpose maximizers, and that recognizing and nurturing these aspects can lead to more fulfilling and productive work lives.

Keywords

💡Motivations

Motivations refer to the internal and external factors that drive individuals to take action or exhibit certain behaviors. In the context of the video, the speaker discusses how traditional views on motivation, such as rewards and punishments, may not be as effective as previously thought, especially for tasks requiring more complex cognitive skills. The video challenges the conventional wisdom that higher rewards lead to better performance.

💡Rewards

Rewards are tangible or intangible incentives given to individuals to encourage desired behaviors or outcomes. The video script highlights a study from MIT that found paradoxically that higher rewards for tasks requiring cognitive skills can lead to poorer performance, contradicting the common belief that greater incentives always result in better results.

💡Punishments

Punishments are negative consequences intended to discourage certain behaviors. The script briefly mentions the idea that punishing undesirable behavior leads to a reduction in that behavior. However, the main focus is on the surprising effects of rewards rather than punishments.

💡Cognitive Skill

Cognitive skills encompass a range of mental abilities, including problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity. The video discusses a study that found that for tasks requiring even basic cognitive skills, higher rewards could lead to worse performance, indicating that motivation is more complex than simply responding to financial incentives.

💡Autonomy

Autonomy refers to the desire and ability to self-direct one's actions and decisions. The speaker argues that providing autonomy can lead to better performance and satisfaction, contrasting traditional management practices that focus on compliance. Examples from the script include Atlassian's policy of allowing developers one day of self-directed work, which has fostered innovation.

💡Mastery

Mastery is the drive to improve and excel in a particular area or skill. The video emphasizes the importance of mastery as a motivator, citing examples such as people playing musical instruments for personal satisfaction and the creation of sophisticated projects like Linux and Wikipedia by volunteers, driven by the desire to master their craft and contribute meaningfully.

💡Purpose

Purpose is the overarching reason or goal that gives meaning to one's actions. The script discusses the rise of the 'purpose motive' in organizations, where having a transcendent purpose can attract better talent and improve work satisfaction. It suggests that when profit motives are disconnected from purpose, it can lead to negative outcomes.

💡Incentives

Incentives are anything that motivates someone to do something, often used interchangeably with rewards. The video challenges the traditional incentive-based motivation model, suggesting that for complex tasks, incentives may not improve but could actually decrease performance.

💡Management

Management refers to the act of overseeing and making decisions about a business or organization. The speaker contrasts traditional management, which seeks compliance, with modern practices that encourage autonomy and self-direction, which are more conducive to engagement and innovation in the workforce.

💡Economists

Economists are professionals who study the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The script mentions economists from top-tier institutions who have reached conclusions about motivation that contradict conventional economic teachings, indicating a shift in understanding human behavior in the context of economics.

💡Profit Motive

The profit motive is the driving force behind businesses to generate income and maximize shareholder value. The video argues that while profit is important, it should not be the sole or primary motive, as it can lead to a lack of innovation and dissatisfaction if not balanced with a strong sense of purpose.

Highlights

The science of motivation is surprisingly complex and can be counterintuitive.

People are not as predictably responsive to rewards and punishments as commonly believed.

A study at MIT showed that higher rewards led to poorer performance in tasks requiring cognitive skills.

Economists from top-tier institutions challenged traditional economic theories on motivation.

The Federal Reserve Bank, a mainstream institution, funded research contradicting standard economic assumptions.

A replication of the MIT study in rural India confirmed that higher incentives can lead to worse performance.

For simple tasks, rewards work well, but they don't for more complex tasks requiring creativity.

Money can be a motivator, but primarily by paying enough to remove financial concerns from the mind of the worker.

Three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction are autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy, or the desire to be self-directed, is key for engagement in the workforce.

Atlassian's 'FedEx Day' is an example of radical self-direction leading to innovative outcomes.

Mastery, the urge to improve skills, is a strong motivator, as seen in hobbies like playing musical instruments.

Highly skilled volunteers contribute significant work for free, driven by challenge, mastery, and contribution.

The 'purpose motive' is rising in importance, with organizations seeking a transcendent purpose.

When the profit motive is detached from the purpose motive, it can lead to ethical issues and poor quality products.

Organizations that flourish are driven by a purpose motive, not just profit.

Examples of successful companies, like Skype and Apple, are driven by a purpose beyond profit.

The science suggests that treating people as people, rather than tools, can improve both work and the world.

Transcripts

Our motivations are unbelievably interesting.

I've been working on this for a few years

and I find the topic still amazingly engaging and interesting,

so I want to tell you about that.

The science is really surprising. It's a little bit freaky!

We are not as endlessly manipulable

and as predictable as you would think.

There's a whole set of unbelievably interesting studies.

I want to give you two that call into question this idea

that if you reward something, you get more of the behaviour you want

and if you punish something you get less of it.

Let's go from London to the mean streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts,

in the northeast of the United States,

and talk about a study at MIT -

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They took a whole group of students and gave them a set of challenges.

Things like...

..They gave them these challenges and, to incentivise performance,

they gave them three levels of reward.

If you did pretty well, you got a small monetary reward.

If you did medium well, you got a medium monetary reward.

If you were one of the top performers,

you got a large cash prize.

We've seen this movie before.

This is a typical motivation scheme within organisations.

We reward the very top performers. We ignore the low performers.

Folks in the middle, OK, you get a little bit.

So what happens? They do the test. They have these incentives.

Here's what they found out.

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill,

bonuses worked as they would be expected.

The higher the pay, the better the performance. That makes sense.

But here's what happened.

Once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill,

a larger reward led to poorer performance.

This is strange. How can that possibly be?

What's interesting is that these folks who did this are economists,

two at MIT, one at University of Chicago, one at Carnegie Mellon,

the top tier of the economics profession.

They're reaching this conclusion that seems contrary

to what a lot of us learned in economics -

the higher the reward, the better the performance.

They're saying that once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill,

it's the other way around.

The idea that these rewards don't work that way

seems vaguely left-wing and socialist, doesn't it?

It's a weird socialist conspiracy.

For those of you who have those conspiracy theories,

I want to point out the notoriously left-wing socialist group

that financed the research - the Federal Reserve Bank.

This is the mainstream of the mainstream coming to a conclusion

that seems to defy the laws of behavioural physics.

This is strange, so what do they do?

They say, "This is freaky. Let's test it somewhere else.

"Maybe that $50, $60 prize

"isn't sufficiently motivating for an MIT student!

"Let's go to a place where $50 is more significant, relatively.

"We're going to go to Madurai, rural India,

"where $50, $60 is actually a significant sum of money."

They replicated the experiment in India, roughly as follows.

Small rewards - the equivalent of two weeks' salary.

I mean, sorry, low performance - two weeks' salary.

Medium performance - a month's salary.

High performance - two months' salary.

Those are real good incentives. You'll get a different result here.

What happened was that the people offered the medium reward

did no better than the people offered the small reward.

This time around, the people offered the top reward did worst of all.

Higher incentives led to worse performance.

What's interesting is that it isn't that anomalous.

This has been replicated over and over again by psychologists,

by sociologists and by economists - over and over and over again.

For simple, straightforward tasks,

"if you do this, then you get that", they're great!

For tasks that are algorithmic,

a set of rules you have to follow and get a right answer,

"if then" rewards, carrot and stick, outstanding!

But when a task gets more complicated,

when it requires conceptual, creative thinking,

those kinds of motivators demonstrably don't work.

Fact - money is a motivator at work, but in a slightly strange way.

If you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated.

There's another paradox here.

The best use of money as a motivator

is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table,

so they're not thinking about money, they're thinking about the work.

Once you do that, there are three factors that the science shows

lead to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction -

autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed, direct our own lives.

In many ways, traditional notions of management run foul of that.

Management is great if you want compliance.

If you want engagement, which is what we want in the workforce today,

as people are doing more sophisticated things,

self-direction is better.

Let me give you some examples

of almost radical forms of self-direction in the workplace

that lead to good results.

Let's start with Atlassian, an Australian software company.

They do something really cool.

Once a quarter on a Thursday, they say to their developers,

"For the next 24 hours, you can work on anything you want,

"the way you want, with whomever you want.

"All we ask is that you show the results to the company

"in this fun meeting - not a star chamber session,

"but with beer and cake and fun and things like that."

It turns out that that one day of pure, undiluted autonomy

has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software,

a whole array of ideas for new products

that otherwise would never emerge - one day.

This is not the sort of thing that I would have done

before I knew this research.

I would have said, "You want people to be innovative?

"Give them a frickin' innovation bonus.

"If you do something cool, I'll give you $2,500."

They're saying, "You probably want to do something interesting.

"Let me get out of your way."

One day of autonomy produces things that had never emerged.

Let's talk about mastery - our urge to get better at stuff.

We like to get better at stuff.

This is why people play musical instruments on the weekend.

These people are acting in ways that seem irrational economically.

They play musical instruments? Why?

It's not going to get them a mate or make them any money.

Cos it's fun. Cos you get better at it and that's satisfying.

I imagine that if I went to my first economics professor,

a woman named Mary Alice Shulman,

and I went to her in 1983 and said,

"Professor Shulman, can I talk to you after class?

"I got this idea for a business model and I want to run it past you.

"Here's how it would work.

"You get a bunch of people around the world who do highly skilled work

"but they're willing to do it for free

"and volunteer their time - 20, sometimes 30 hours a week."

She's looking somewhat sceptically there.

"But I'm not done!

"Then what they create, they give it away rather than sell it.

"It's gonna be huge!" (LAUGHTER)

She would have thought I was insane.

It seems to fly in the face of so many things, but you have Linux

powering one out of four corporate servers in Fortune 500 companies,

Apache powering more than the majority of web servers, Wikipedia.

What's going on? Why are people doing this?

Many are technically sophisticated, highly skilled people who have jobs.

OK? They have jobs! They're working at jobs for pay,

doing sophisticated technological work.

And yet, during their limited discretionary time,

they do equally, if not more, technically sophisticated work,

not for their employer, but for someone else for free.

That's a strange economic behaviour. Economists have looked into it.

"Why are you doing this?" It's overwhelmingly clear -

challenge and mastery, along with making a contribution, that's it.

What you see more and more is the rise of the "purpose motive".

More and more organisations want some kind of transcendent purpose.

Partly because it makes coming to work better,

partly because that's the way to get better talent.

What we're seeing now

is when the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive,

bad things happen.

Ethically sometimes, but also bad things, like "not good stuff"!

Like crappy products.

Like lame services.

Like uninspiring places to work.

When the profit motive is paramount

or when it becomes completely unhitched from the purpose motive,

people don't do great things.

More and more organisations are realising this,

disturbing the categories between what's profit and what's purpose.

I think that actually heralds something interesting.

The companies that are flourishing - profit, not-for-profit

or somewhere in between - are animated by this purpose motive.

Let me give you some examples.

The founder of Skype says, "Our goal is to be disruptive,

"but in the cause of making the world a better place."

Pretty good purpose. Here's Steve Jobs.

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

That's the kind of thing that might get you up, racing to go to work.

I think we are purpose maximisers, not only profit maximisers.

I think the science shows that we care about mastery very deeply

and that we want to be self-directed.

I think that the big take-away here

is that if we start treating people like people,

not assuming that they're simply horses -

slower, smaller, better smelling horses -

if we get past the ideology of carrot and stick

and look at the science,

we can build organisations and work lives that make us better off.

They also have the promise to make our world just a little bit better.