The Puzzel of Motivation

 

The recently viewed video by Career analyst Dan Pink examined the puzzle of motivation.
He stated a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think.
He started off with the candle problem which originated in the mid forties. It is a problem solving puzzle, where you have thumb tacks inside a box, matches, and a candle. There are two groups that are assigned to solve a problem. Their task is to attached the candle to the wall so it will not drip onto the table. The first group is told that they will be timed, so average times may be calculated. The second group is told that if they are in the top 25% , they will receive $5 and if they have the fastest time they will receive $20.  You would think that the group with the reward incentive would win  since they have the extra motivation of winning money. During that time period it was a good amount of money. What happened next may shock some people,  the group with the money incentive took three and a half minutes longer. Dan Pink explained that rewards do the complete opposite. It blocked creativity and dulled the thinking process. The assumption is that if you want people to work better and faster and you reward them, it does not work. Rewards narrow your focus but it does work well for simple problem solving.    


            If you repeat the same candle problem with the tacks outside the box the group with the incentive does very well. They have that narrow focus for simple problem solving. The problem is most tasks in our country today involves creative thinking. Many of your simple tasks are being outsource to other countries. There were similar studies completed at MIT, India, and the London School of Economics with similar results. At the London School of Economics there were studies conducted on paid for performance. They concluded that "Financial incentives can result in a negative impact in overall performance. Intrinsic motivation where you do things because they matter, they are interesting, or they are part of something important is what really matters. Extrinsic motivators work well with tasks that involved mechanical skills. But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skills the larger reward "led to poorer performance".

 Building  Blocks

There were three building blocks that he referred to:

1. Autonomy - The urge to direct our own life's.
2. Mastery - The desire to get better and better with something that matters.
3. Purpose - The yearning to do something good for something larger than ourselves.

Autonomy is what he spoke about in this session. Below are a few examples from different businesses:

1. FEDEX Days - Australian software company tell their engineers to go and work on whatever they want for 24 hours. Many solutions have come to light with this approach.
2.  20% Time - Google allows their workers to work on something they care about. Half the new products in a typical year are created at this time e.g. Google News, Gmail.
3. ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) - 20 companies in North America operate like this.

• No fix work schedule
• Just get your job done
• Meetings are optional

Results from the above examples:

• Productivity goes up
• Worker engagement goes up
• Turnover goes down

Guest Speaker Adam Taylor

Adam Taylor has a passion for Science and Technology. He is a high school Science teacher  who started  #scistuchat a Twitter chat with High School students & Scientists. You can follow him on Twitter under the handle @2footgiraffe. The U.S. Dept. of Energy and renowned scientists have participated with his projects on Twitter. He mentioned to not worry about how many followers you have on Twitter that it will come in time when building your PLN. Once you select a professional in your field check to see who they are following and follow those individuals also. Also retweet articles that you find interesting. The owner will appreciate it.



During our class session we also watched a video on Kansas students who solved a water crises for a school in Kenya. Their water lines had burst and the water was contaminated with their sewage. The teachers from the two schools had connected through Skype. The grade students in Kansas immediately started working on a solution to the water problem. Their solution for the crises was Life Straw filters. They immediately started emailing the company. A company spokesman connected with them through Skype and told them that once they raised $2,000 dollars that they will immediately send 4 filters to the school in Kenya. This was terrific news!   

Artistic Tools

The book "Untangling The Web" will give you the paint, microphone, and special effects to empower your student's ideas. Try these sites:

1. Big Huge Labs - Edit Photos and Images

2. iPiccy - Photo editing regardless of OS.

3. Sumu Paint - Full feature drawing application.

4. Ujam - Create, edit and remix music.

5. WeVideo - Upload video to the web and edit it on line in a rich editor.