95% of Managers Follow an Outdated Theory of Motivation | Hacker News Reader

95% of Managers Follow an Outdated Theory of Motivation

blog.idonethis.com

19 pointssmalter5 comments

I don't see how the article and the described experiment refutes Maslow's hierarchy. In fact, it validates it! The workers were motivated more by the important things at the peak of the pyramid.

I think workers would be motivated by threats to the bottom layers only if those threats were credible. For instance, a threat related to job security is only real if the worker believes that he cannot easily get a similar job elsewhere. Someone who is being actively head-hunted will hardly fall for that.

Yes, base needs will motivate people to work. For instance, if you're in the woods somewhere, and you sense that bad weather is coming, you will scramble to build your tent, whereas if the weather is great, you might take your time.

People are obviously motivated by money, too: for instance, they line up for hours to take advantage door crasher deals on Boxing Day. They have to believe that there is an opportunity to get something that will only come once.

This is wrong. The reason pay and job security are no longer powerful motivators is because of the way society evolved in the past few decades. It used to be common to work for the same company your entire life, forced separation from that social structure causes a lot more pain back then than now.

In addition, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a generalized framework, it's not a guide on how to day to day manage your employees. Saying it's "outdated" because its previous misinterpretations no longer apply to today's world is irresponsible.

>'The most important motivator for employees at work is what Amabile and Kramer call “the power of small wins“: employees are highly productive and driven to do their best work when they feel as if they’re making progress every day toward a meaningful goal.'

I thought Dan Ariely's TED talk What makes us feel good about our work? [1] did a great job of demonstrating this idea.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho

Reid Hoffman is writing about peoples/teams basic needs:

http://www.businessinsider.com/management-advice-from-linked...

I think this was also posted on HN in the last few days.

Among that 95%, some are actually malevolent and do understand that punishment doesn't motivate in the long term.

There are neutral-intended but incompetent managers who think "pressure makes diamonds", but there are also the political adepts who take out talented subordinates to pre-empt future competition, and the sadists who know that they're crippling the people under them, but because they "manage up" well, they can get away with anything.

The sadists (rare) and malignant politically-minded players (less rare) use "pressure makes diamonds" as a rationalization, and a much larger set of clueless people (without bad intentions) copy it. And that's how you end up with Theory X management.

Also, I don't think this contradicts the Maslovian theory. If you start fires on someone's lower need levels (security, physical health) then those trump their higher need levels (creativity, esteem). The thing is that, even though the baser needs are more "foundational", that doesn't mean they drive people to do better work. Creativity drops, and fatigue sets in, and you get really awful work because pain and fear rarely motivate; they paralyze.

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