3 Great Talks On What Really Motivates Us

Here are three great talks about what motivates us and makes us more productive, efficient and encourages the "right" (wanted) behaviour to create or reinforce the desired company culture. If you haven't seen or listened to them before, the approximately 30 minutes it takes to do so will give you a significant return on investment! If you have, you might enjoy the highlights below.

"Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" (Youtube animated video) by Dan Pink, author of bestselling "A Whole New Mind" and "Drive".

"We are not as endlessly maniputable and as predictable as you would think...as long as the task only involved mechanical skill, bonuses worked as be expected; the higher the pay the better the performance...but once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance...This defies the laws of behavioural physics! This isn't that anomalous. This has been replicated over and over and over again by psychologists, by sociologists, and by economists...If you don't pay enough, people won't be motivated...The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table."

"Revolutionizing Company Culture" (ITunes podcast) with Ann Rhoades, CEO of People Inc and author of "Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition"

"I have always believed that monetary rewards are very short term. I am a huge believer in rewarding people for the right behaviors and not necessarily incentivizing them with cash... Mary Kay who started Mary Kay Cosmetics used to say that if there is something that is more important to people than sex - it's recognition, and I love that saying. She said recognition and rewards that are not monetary but are really meant, are so much more impactful. When great leaders that I've known say thank you it means so much to people and as long as they're making a reasonable salary, that's more important than a one time event with cash."

"Productivity Secrets of a Very Busy Man" (ITunes podcast) with Bob Pozen, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and author of the HBR article "Extreme Productivity" (not yet published).

"Probably the most important overriding principle [to being more productive with your time] is that you have to be focused on results, not on time spent...the réal question is what you produce, not how many hours you put in...At one point in my youth, I was a lawyer billing hours and I would say that that really does create a perverse set of incentives. If you really are fast and can figure out a good solution quickly, you are in a sense penalized because you are not being able to bill as many hours."