Motivators to greater achievements: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

This 10 minutes film from theRSA.org is entertainingly visulized as it describes the results of to some surprising research on motivation. It's actaully quite obvious and yet it contradicts traditional models of rewardings and bonuses as incentive models.

A summary for you who don't have 10 minutes:

It is a common theory that if you reward something, you get more the behavior you want.

MIT studies show that as long as the task involves only mechanical skills the bonuses work as expected, but once the task called for rudimentary cognitive skills, a larger reward showes poorer performance. It actually works the other way around.

Further tests in India with a much different target group proved this result with an even stronger effect. Huge rewards resulted in disastrous achievements.

The conclusion is that you have to pay enough for your employees not to care about the money, because if you don't pay them enough they will not be motivated at all, BUT the factors that lead to better performance from these employees are:

Autonomy - the desire to be self directed and engaged outrules money
Mastery - we like to get better on stuff, when we improve it's fun
Purpose - only bad things are generated when the profit motive is set above the purpose of the work

I will think more about those bad things not described here in an upcoming post.

More from me about what is fun:
The goal of having fun
Fun is challenges

To do lists for everything

There are so incredibly many things I want to do. I'm doing them all the time, but yet I feel I don't have time enough for them all and I am not doing them fast enough. It's actually stressful to have the time and possibility to do all the things I want. The hard thing is to prioritize between them when it is myself who is the goal, the target. I want to do them all and there is no rational way, no economics, no guaranteed profits to lean to. Normally your job sets the prioritizations of the day, and this is something I'm an expert at - do things, prioritize, effectively manage all the tasks on long todo lists, one after another. I know how to get things done.

So this weekend it's todo list time. I need them to

- get an overview of how much it is, and how much time I can expect them all to take, (and here we're talking years actually)

- be as fast as possible and not spend an hour between one task and the next figuring out what the next should be.

- feel satisfaction (and kind of pride) when putting one behind, knowing I'm doing the right stuff and moving forward

- not get nervous about forgetting something

- trust that I will get them all done

I feel hope again. I will do everything I want, not only the things I do right now.

Victoria, Daniel, frillor, fruar och herrar

Kanske att jag helt omedvetet var påverkad av det kommande bröllopsspektaklet när jag i februari beställde boken Frillor, fruar och herrar - en okänd kvinnohistoria. Jag trodde i alla fall att jag ville läsa om kvinnor i en annan tid, men nu när kaoset kring överlämningen av bruden uppstod, börjar jag tro att det fanns undermedvetna funderingar på kungliga förhållanden över klassgränserna.

Frillorna befolkar, om än i skymundan, så gott som hela den Europeiska historien mycket långt tillbaka. Frillorna var både respekterade, erkända och belönade älskarinnor till kungar och prinsar. De var ofta kvinnan han älskade, medan giftermålet var ett politiskt och/eller ekonomiskt förbund. Ordet 'Frilla' kommer från ursprungliga ord som betyder 'den älskade' och 'älska'. Även Frej och Freja, frände, fria och friend kommer antagligen från samma ord.

'Gift' är samma ord som engelskans 'gift' och 'bröllop' kommer från det fornnordiska 'brudköp'.

Barnadödligheten var brutal i de norra delarna av Europa. En kung eller prins fick bara ha en frilla åt gången och de barn man fick tillsammans tillföll fadern efter två års ålder. Barn var hårdvaluta helt enkelt och både frillor och deras barn blev mycket väl omhändertagna när ett kommande bröllop fick avbryta förhållandet. Väl i den bemärkelse att någon i den närmaste kungliga bekantskapskretsen beordrades att gifta sig med frillan, samt att stora ägor och summor delades ut under resterande liv. Även andra kungliga släktingar såg om de dumpade frillorna. Barnen ingick i den samlade kungliga barnaskaran och var lika respekterade och nära tronen som äktfödda barn.

Men gifta sig med sin frilla fick kungen inte göra. Den mest kända förbrytaren av denna regel var kanske Erik XIV som efter förvirrad galenskap med flera mord bakom sig fick hjälp att hålla sig kvar vid makten, men som sen begick misstaget att gifta sig med sin älskade Karin Månsdotter.

Karin hade flyttat in hos Erik som fjortonåring, fött deras första barn Sigrid två år senare och de gifte sig året därpå. Hon var bara drottning i 86 dagar innan Eriks bröder störtade Erik från makten bl a med stöd av anklagelsen för det oståndaktiga giftermålet.

Nu har jag fått mitt ställningstagande att giftermål inte är för mig stärkt. Inte vill jag lämnas i gåva till någon. Jag undrar också hur en så stencool tjej som kronprinsessan Victoria inte har koll på, eller känner sig relaterad till historien (som dessutom är hennes historia mer än någon annan svensks), men det är ju för att jag har så svårt att tro att man vill bli överlämnad från en man till en annan och det har ju inte jag med att göra. Och så undrar jag hur den som i dag inte stödjer frillobröllop tänker. Känns grymt gammalmodigt - alltihop. Och jag har brytt mig om att kommentera det kungliga bröllopet.

Det var de intressanta frillornas fel.

Question me, I live on challenges

Had a great meeting today with someone who did not agree on everything. This is quite unusual and to some almost rude when it is someone you meet for the first time. He kind of apologized after an hour for questioning about everything, I guess to assure that I did not get too uncomfortable, and I agree it could probably scare some. On the contrary I realized at the same moment that I truly enjoyed the situation. The key to this was of course that his questioning was challenging, not quieting me. He did not neglect my ideas, but asking why this was my thoughts as he didn’t have the same. This challenge is also a response - he listened and returned.

To talk to someone who is always questioning you can be dreadfully frustrating, and the outcome can be irritation and anger when you know it is about him or her just wanting it his or her way. Out of this conversation of today, many of my thoughts developed further, some were concretized, some were put in smaller situations and no longer generalizations, but still true. This kind of conversation is the loop of fun – challenge, improving, response – there is no stop to it, it can be eternal as it is hard to say that you master any subject where people have different theories, and it’s fun!

This is why talking to anyone anytime can be converted to great energy. Even hard and sad conversations add new information to the former knowledge and the ideas you have are developed further. It can be tough at the time, but soon you’re moving on with better knowledge and try it out on someone new.

The richest men in the world

On our way in to Paris, we passed IKEA, and I told my 8 years old daughter that the Swedish founder of this store is one of the richest men in the world. 'Why men?' she replied. 'What men?' - I didn't even understand how I was transfering this traditional view of status and power in the world to my oldest daughter. 'Why is the top list only of rich men?' she persisted.

I explained to her that not that long ago women stayed at home serving the house and family while men with their stronger physics worked on the fields and that history still haunts us. This situation felt superduperold both to her and me. It's been a looong time since that was true and there's a looong history to follow to understand why we are where we are today, and it would really make no sense to her, as not to me.

Where women are going

In the turn of the last century, women started to work outside of the homes for the first time. The industry recruited all forces, also women were welcome.

In the 10’s women had to take men’s jobs for the first time, and in the 20’s they could vote for the first time. It started off well. Self-for-sure women got inspired and empowered by wearing pants, smoking cigarettes and driving a car – they did it just as well as any man. But the 40’s were really tough times where it wasn’t all that fun to be both the man and the woman in the family - all alone with the family’s surviving on ones shoulders.

What a relief for both men and women to take a step back in the 50’s, back to the core family values where the man was working, bringing in the money, and the woman stayed at home, taking care of the family. It is somewhat of a working model as long as there is mutual respect and understanding for how it must be executed for everyone’s well being.

It failed. As the parents brought up well educated youngsters, they all wanted equality, their rightful chances and a great job with a great income. The 60s revolution swept away the perfect wife, and opened up the road for the free thinking, sexy and exposed woman.

All this naked flesh offered new ideas about the natural human being where no laws or boundaries were to prison women in bras or even in clothes.
Bodily equality was achieved, but in the 80’s the women wanted the money and the power too. They tried out the same power suites, vocabulary, education and even top positions as men, but with no success.

The strategy in the 90’s was to take all advantages they could from being a woman. The easiest way through history has been to use looks and sexuality to get anywhere and so it was. The winner was the girl who had a man who let her do all the shopping she wanted, who gave her statement bags, glamorous travels and who didn’t require any income or money from her as long as she looked good. Men were quite happy about this model too as it keeps the women out of the politics and away from the power. Others think it sucks to not share the responsibility of the family.

This lifestyle turned again to a longing for core family values, and there have never been so many babies born as the in the last decade, and never have the mothers had so long nails, been drinking so much coffee or looked as good – or had as good looking homes disposed in life style magazines. (The ‘I must and can be seen’ culture also took place).

Since a few years back the environmental problems have grown bigger on us. It makes us actually try to do it ourselves, to not consume every day, to keep recycle bottles under the stairs messing up our beautiful homes and to take the bike instead of the car sometimes. This is something that many women take part in - the earth, the everyday life. There are as always fashion that fits this current life style, but there is also another style matching the need of claiming the rights to the technology.

Women still are hard to attract to learn how to program or develop techniques that are crucial in our everyday lives – in entertainment, in education, in cooking, in recycling, in transportation, in shopping etc etc. I really hope that the upcoming decade will be when young girls realize that there is so much power and money in the tech science and that we neeeeed you to educate and become a part of the technical agenda. I hope that the tech/future fashion is predestining the future for us.