Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
-Welcome to Lecture 11.
We were going to discuss "How Do You Motivate Employees,"
the "Harvard Business Review" paper by Frederick Herzberg.
We touched on this a little bit in our discussions
about the evolution of motivational theories.
This, I think, is one of the more actionable theories
of motivation, which is why I want
to spend a little bit more time on it.
I want to go over some of it again, reemphasize some of it,
and why I want you to read the paper-- this paper
of this title that Herzberg wrote-- as part of this course.
And then he notes that psychology of motivation
is very complex.
And that there's a "dismal ratio of knowledge to speculation."
So a lot of folks speculating without being
able to prove things.
But yet this "has not dampened the enthusiasm
for new forms of snake oil."
And if you want to see any of that, go to any large bookstore
and wander through the business and management
aisles, book shelves.
And you'll see plenty of popular press books
that promise you that they'll be able to help you figure out
how to motivate people, without any real empirical data
behind it.
So Herzberg's talking about the results of his research
into this topic.
And let's start with the myths about motivation.
A "kick in the butt," or KITA, is not motivation.
If I kick my dog, he will move.
If I want him to move again, I need to kick him again.
He's not motivated.
I have not motivated him, I forced him or her to move.
You can recharge someone's battery over and over.
But when someone develops their own generator,
when they're motivated from inside,
when they create their own energy to go after things
and accomplish things, then they've become motivated.
So hygiene versus motivators.
How do you install a generator?
Well, let's take a quick review of Herzberg's
motivation-hygiene factor theory.
Factors that produce job satisfaction,
and motivation along with it, are separate and distinct
from factors that cause dissatisfaction.
This is the key to Herzberg's findings,
that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not
opposites.
The causes of satisfaction and dissatisfaction
are not merely the inverse of one.
That condition A causes satisfaction,
so if I just flip it around and have the inverse of condition
A, it will cause dissatisfaction.
That's not true.
They're caused by different things,
by different characteristics, by different situations,
by different behaviors of people around you.
And we can explain this by looking
at the two kinds of needs in people--
the animal needs and those that are uniquely human.
The animal needs are built-in drive to avoid pain.
Drives conditioned to biological needs, like you get hungry;
when you get hungry, you want to eat.
Well, buying food requires money,
so money becomes a drive, becomes an animal drive.
But what are the uniquely human characteristics?
The ability to achieve and experience
psychological growth.
No other species does this to our knowledge,
certainly not to the degree that humans do.
So in the organizational context,
which is what we care about in an engineering management
course, this is job content.
The content of someone's job, of my job and your job,
allows us to achieve and allows us
to experience psychological growth.
They're uniquely human characteristics.
And they are motivators.
They cause job satisfaction.
They motivate people to do a great job.
So these "growth" or "motivator" factors,
they're intrinsic to the job.
They're part of the job.
It's the opportunity for achievement;
recognition for that achievement;
the nature of the work itself; the level of responsibility
that you get to take on; and the growth, the personal growth,
and the organizational advancement.
These are all things that are tightly bound to the job.
They're intrinsic to the job that you have.
The dissatisfaction-avoidance or hygiene factors, KITA factors,
are extrinsic to the job.
They are not tightly bound to what the job is itself.
There are things, like company policy, administration,
the quality of your supervision, interpersonal relationships
with other folks at work, the working conditions, salary,
status, security.
These are all things that, although they're
related to the job-- obviously, working conditions
are what the conditions you do your job in,
salary is what you get paid for your job--
but they're not the actual performance of the job.
The Exhibit 1 in his paper, I'll refer you back
to that for the data.
Two major conclusions.
Motivators cause satisfaction.
Hygiene factors cause unhappiness, ergo
dissatisfaction.
And this is why I spend this time going through this theory
again, just reiterating these points,
because this is very actionable.
We, as practicing managers, can take this model and act on it.
If motivators are the primary cause of satisfaction,
the people that you lead, make it possible
for them to achieve this satisfaction,
to have these motivators.
I'm going to back up a couple of charts here.
Make it possible for them to achieve things.
Give them recognition, responsibility, growth
and advancement.
The hygiene factors, which are the primary cause
of unhappiness, control them to the best of your ability.
Obviously, when you're low in the organizational chain,
you may not be able to influence company policy.
Administration, perhaps you could run interference
for your folks.
Supervision, that's you, so obviously you affect that.
So don't let these things turn into demotivators.
The motivation-hygiene theory suggests
that work can be enriched.
If a job can be made to be satisfying,
then people will be motivated.
The job will get done better, will bring about more effective
use of personnel.
This is not merely enlarging the meaninglessness of a job.
And what Herzberg's referring to here
is in the 1980s, late 1980s, there
was things where folks would say, well,
if we put a bigger challenge in front of people,
they'll be more motivated.
Or let's give them something different to do.
Or maybe let's rotate them through jobs.
And Herzberg's point here is it is the intrinsic nature
of a job that's motivating.
And going to a different place in the office
or a different place on the plant floor
and doing another job that's devoid of motivators that's
as dissatisfying as the other one
that you had and perhaps is encumbered with hygiene factors
with demotivators doesn't help.
You're just being demotivated in a different locale
and a different set of situations
than you were before.
This is referred to as Horizontal job loading.
And in Herzberg's paper, he goes into somewhat detail
about how to actually go through a process of designing a job.
And we will not cover that here in this lecture,
although it is an important part of the paper.
So hopefully, you guys have read it.
And if you haven't, get back and read it now
because it is important.
And that sums up this or concludes this discussion.
We went over this again in a previous lecture
on the whole development of the theory of motivation.
But this is just so actionable, it's so immediately actionable
to every one as a manager, I just
wanted to reiterate this and emphasize it again.
So hopefully, you found this useful.
And I look forward to our next discussion.
Thank you very much for your atten--