by Dr. Cecil Clements (19th June 2012)
I was at Bombay Airport yesterday and going through the bookstore and to my surprise, I found a lovely little package of HBR classics. As you know, I often quote from Harvard Business Review and this had 9 little booklets put together, dealing with topics like ‘End of Corporate Imperialism’, ‘The Knowledge-Creating Company’, ‘The Discipline of Teams’, ‘How Do You Motivate Employees’, ‘Ethics Without the Sermon’, ‘How to Choose a Leadership Pattern’, etc. I was intrigued and couldn’t help but pick it up; enjoyed going through it.
One particular book caught my attention: ‘One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?’ by Frederick Herzberg. It brought a smile to my face because I thought that it was the perennial question. How do we motivate people and get the best out of them in the different situations that we find ourselves in.
I remember almost a couple of years ago, when we first started these calls, I had quoted Adah Maurer in an article entitled ‘A General Theory of Motivation’ where John Kenneth Galbraith was quoted in The New Industrial State about the 4 levels of motivation:
I was at Bombay Airport yesterday and going through the bookstore and to my surprise, I found a lovely little package of HBR classics. As you know, I often quote from Harvard Business Review and this had 9 little booklets put together, dealing with topics like ‘End of Corporate Imperialism’, ‘The Knowledge-Creating Company’, ‘The Discipline of Teams’, ‘How Do You Motivate Employees’, ‘Ethics Without the Sermon’, ‘How to Choose a Leadership Pattern’, etc. I was intrigued and couldn’t help but pick it up; enjoyed going through it.
One particular book caught my attention: ‘One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?’ by Frederick Herzberg. It brought a smile to my face because I thought that it was the perennial question. How do we motivate people and get the best out of them in the different situations that we find ourselves in.
I remember almost a couple of years ago, when we first started these calls, I had quoted Adah Maurer in an article entitled ‘A General Theory of Motivation’ where John Kenneth Galbraith was quoted in The New Industrial State about the 4 levels of motivation:
- Compulsion: you do it because you don’t have a choice. An example was given of slaves who worked to avoid the lash.
- Pecuniary reward or the wage: you do a particular job, it doesn’t matter what it is; the idea is that you get money.
- Identification: being able to become associated with the group; have goals that might be similar but superior to your own and how that can help.
- Adaptation: the person goes along with the group enterprise, not so much because he believes in what they are doing, although he may do that also, but because he hopes to be able to get control and influence the direction of the effort according to his own plans.
Motivation is something that we face all the time. How do we get the people around us to do the work that we require of them, to do it well and in excellent ways and to do it like they own it? While we can talk about people around us, we must ask the same question of ourselves. Are we motivated? Are we doing the things that we ought to be doing because we love to do it?
I remember talking to a good friend of mine who said, “There are so many people who look at Monday as ‘Black Monday’ or ‘Blue Monday’. I wake up every Monday energized and excited about all the things that I can do in the week.” Here was one highly motivated charged individual who buys into what he is doing.
Herzberg says, “Basically when you look at motivation, you think about job satisfaction. Typical job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not opposite of the spinning coin. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction don’t necessarily have the same reasons. If you can get somebody satisfied, it doesn’t mean that they are not dissatisfied. There are different reasons for that.” Then he goes on to say this, “the growth or motivator factors that are intrinsic to the job are achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement and the work itself.”
He also points out to a test that they did for job motivation. When he talks about job satisfaction he says, “These are the motivators: achievement, recognition work itself, responsibility, advancement, growth. But on the other hand, when you talk about dissatisfaction, it’s company policy and administration, supervision, relationship with supervisors, work conditions, salary, relationship with peers, personal life, relationship with subordinates, status and security.”
Basically, what he is saying is “Sometimes we think we have a fix-all solution, but satisfaction and dissatisfaction really stem from different places.” Finally he says, “We can actually go to a different place – a place where we are not talking about motivation.” Jokingly he says, “Initially when we started talking about motivation, there was a ‘Kick in the Pants’ theory. If you want to motivate somebody, give them a kick in the pants and you got the job done. Over the years, that has changed. We realize that that can no longer be a stimulant to get a job done or a job well done.”
As we look at these satisfaction and dissatisfaction theories, we find that even there it is getting more and more complex: - to find out if there is job satisfaction and how to improve it, or if there is job dissatisfaction and how to make that go away. In his book, ‘One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees’, he says that there’s a new theory making the rounds that’s called Job Enrichment. In this theory, people are trying to somehow change the job profile into a place where it enriches the job. The job itself changes. Though in its nature it remains the same, some of the things that are added on, not in terms of increments, but in terms of the job itself, are changed.
I would recommend that you read this book. It’s all about trying to find how we can motivate people to do a better job. If you’ve been hearing these calls for any length of time, you will know that I am a firm proponent of the fact – ‘Workplace and spirituality do indeed go hand in hand.’ We have the ability to not only lean on our own understanding and resources, but that we can have the Almighty God input into our lives as well.
I like this particular quote by Mark Dowd, writing in The Guardian: “Lobbyists and campaigners have been grappling for years with this question – What is the best way to engage the human imagination on the issues of our time? Guilt and fear are very limited in their appeal and, more often than not, only induce a greater fear to turn away and carry on as before. What’s encouraging is to come across so many who are getting more and more familiar with the notion of stewardship. It’s easy enough to scare people about climate change. But there are other ways to capture imaginations and create momentum.”
I like that! I like the whole idea of stewardship, that we are called to serve, to serve in a particular place. That has not happened by chance. We are in a particular place because that is where we ought to be. If that is so, and a job is given to us, then we ought to do it to the best of our abilities.
That takes motivation out of the picture. If we just do a job because we understand that it’s a job that God has given us to do. As our Holy Book says, (Colossians 3:23) ‘Do everything as unto the Lord.” Do everything, including your own job. We do it not because of any resulting salary or even repercussion for not doing it, but we do it as an offering that we give to the Almighty God. That takes the rug out of any reason to look for real motivators. If each one of us begins to do things to the best of our ability, I don’t think there’s going to be any need to look around for any new motivations.
A thought for you, my friends. As you look at your jobs today, don’t do it because that’s what expected of you by your bosses or that’s what you’re trying to get done by people around you. Look at it and say, “I’m doing this because I’m doing it for God and this is an offering to Him.” I pray that that stimulates you this morning.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, on every precious person on this call, I pray that you would inspire them, that you would ignite in them a desire to give you their very best, to do their jobs in an excellent way so that you are honored by it. Help them, help me, help all of us, Master, to be able to give our jobs as fragrant offerings to you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
I remember talking to a good friend of mine who said, “There are so many people who look at Monday as ‘Black Monday’ or ‘Blue Monday’. I wake up every Monday energized and excited about all the things that I can do in the week.” Here was one highly motivated charged individual who buys into what he is doing.
Herzberg says, “Basically when you look at motivation, you think about job satisfaction. Typical job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not opposite of the spinning coin. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction don’t necessarily have the same reasons. If you can get somebody satisfied, it doesn’t mean that they are not dissatisfied. There are different reasons for that.” Then he goes on to say this, “the growth or motivator factors that are intrinsic to the job are achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement and the work itself.”
He also points out to a test that they did for job motivation. When he talks about job satisfaction he says, “These are the motivators: achievement, recognition work itself, responsibility, advancement, growth. But on the other hand, when you talk about dissatisfaction, it’s company policy and administration, supervision, relationship with supervisors, work conditions, salary, relationship with peers, personal life, relationship with subordinates, status and security.”
Basically, what he is saying is “Sometimes we think we have a fix-all solution, but satisfaction and dissatisfaction really stem from different places.” Finally he says, “We can actually go to a different place – a place where we are not talking about motivation.” Jokingly he says, “Initially when we started talking about motivation, there was a ‘Kick in the Pants’ theory. If you want to motivate somebody, give them a kick in the pants and you got the job done. Over the years, that has changed. We realize that that can no longer be a stimulant to get a job done or a job well done.”
As we look at these satisfaction and dissatisfaction theories, we find that even there it is getting more and more complex: - to find out if there is job satisfaction and how to improve it, or if there is job dissatisfaction and how to make that go away. In his book, ‘One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees’, he says that there’s a new theory making the rounds that’s called Job Enrichment. In this theory, people are trying to somehow change the job profile into a place where it enriches the job. The job itself changes. Though in its nature it remains the same, some of the things that are added on, not in terms of increments, but in terms of the job itself, are changed.
I would recommend that you read this book. It’s all about trying to find how we can motivate people to do a better job. If you’ve been hearing these calls for any length of time, you will know that I am a firm proponent of the fact – ‘Workplace and spirituality do indeed go hand in hand.’ We have the ability to not only lean on our own understanding and resources, but that we can have the Almighty God input into our lives as well.
I like this particular quote by Mark Dowd, writing in The Guardian: “Lobbyists and campaigners have been grappling for years with this question – What is the best way to engage the human imagination on the issues of our time? Guilt and fear are very limited in their appeal and, more often than not, only induce a greater fear to turn away and carry on as before. What’s encouraging is to come across so many who are getting more and more familiar with the notion of stewardship. It’s easy enough to scare people about climate change. But there are other ways to capture imaginations and create momentum.”
I like that! I like the whole idea of stewardship, that we are called to serve, to serve in a particular place. That has not happened by chance. We are in a particular place because that is where we ought to be. If that is so, and a job is given to us, then we ought to do it to the best of our abilities.
That takes motivation out of the picture. If we just do a job because we understand that it’s a job that God has given us to do. As our Holy Book says, (Colossians 3:23) ‘Do everything as unto the Lord.” Do everything, including your own job. We do it not because of any resulting salary or even repercussion for not doing it, but we do it as an offering that we give to the Almighty God. That takes the rug out of any reason to look for real motivators. If each one of us begins to do things to the best of our ability, I don’t think there’s going to be any need to look around for any new motivations.
A thought for you, my friends. As you look at your jobs today, don’t do it because that’s what expected of you by your bosses or that’s what you’re trying to get done by people around you. Look at it and say, “I’m doing this because I’m doing it for God and this is an offering to Him.” I pray that that stimulates you this morning.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, on every precious person on this call, I pray that you would inspire them, that you would ignite in them a desire to give you their very best, to do their jobs in an excellent way so that you are honored by it. Help them, help me, help all of us, Master, to be able to give our jobs as fragrant offerings to you. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
charged up, thanks!
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