If you have employees, at the heart of your business is knowing what motivates people to do great work. It turns out that over the last 50 years a group of Social Scientists all over the world have taken a very systematic look at this question.

What they found is actually incredibly important to leaders in any organization. What they found is that there is often only one reward system we use in organizations. It is the if/then reward, as in if you do this, then you will get that. We love rewards. Rewards get our attention. They get our attention in a particular, very fixed way. They get us to zoom in. That frame of mind is extraordinarily effective when the task is algorithmic – following a formula, or a prescribed way of doing things. A piece work assembly line is a good example. Repeat the same task the same way each time. If you work faster, you earn more.

For creative tasks, or complex tasks, we don’t want people to be zoomed in too much. We need to be much more expansive with a looser, broader view. What 50 years of science tells us is that if/then rewards are great for simple and short-term tasks, but not so great for complex and long-term tasks. Take an architect designing structures or an artist painting. Their reward should not be based on repeating the same thing over and over, faster and faster, but to use their creativity and make every project different from the one before.

The problem is that we often use if/then rewards for everything. We use them as a tool that can fix any kind of motivational problem when the facts tell us something different. What we need to learn is how to deploy if/then rewards where they’re effective, but for more creative, complex work, the kind of work that defines the 20^th Century, we need a different motivational mechanism.

If you are trying to get the most out of your workforce, there are four questions you should ask yourself:

1. Am I paying people fairly and am I paying people well? Pay people enough so they are not thinking about the money, they are thinking about the work. Pay enough to take the issue of money off the table.
2. Am I providing sufficient room for autonomy and self-direction in what people do, how they do it, when they do it, and who they do it with?
3. Am I allowing people to make progress each day and get better at something that matters?
4. Do the people inside of my company know why they are doing what they are doing, not merely how to do it?

If you can answer yes to those four questions, you are going to be in good shape and way ahead of your competition.

I look forward to hearing your comments. Call to schedule an appointment to chat if you’d like to discuss how this relates to motivating your employees.