When Larger Rewards = Lower Performance

Please watch this 15 minute animated video: http://goo.gl/8vydb.

It’s 15 minutes well spent on an entertaining summary of Daniel Pink’s groundbreaking work on motivation.

While Mr. Pink focuses on employee motivation and business results, it’s chock-full of epiphanies for anyone who’s focused on motivating people to take action of all kinds.  Our take-aways:

1. Set up simple rewards for simple tasks.

If all you want someone to do is click on a link to sign an online petition, then simple rewards – recognition, entry into a drawing, tickets to an event, cutesy mailing labels – might work.

For the simplest of tasks – those that don’t involve any imagination, creativity, or thought – the higher the rewards the better the performance. So, if you’re working on building the bottom of your engagement pyramid or all you need is some very quick, very surface, very transaction set of actions, then by all means keep considering the contest someone suggested and invest in those premiums.

2. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose motivate more complex actions.

If it’s not enough for your activists to click a link, but you need them to write a personal letter, a simple if-then rewards system may actually drive down performance.  Ditto for higher-level asks like putting together an event, visiting a legislator, doing peer-to-peer fundraising, and the like.

Research demonstrates that as soon as cognitive engagement like creativity, imagination, or ingenuity is required, people are better motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

• Autonomy – a level of ownership and self-direction in the task,
• Mastery – a sense of getting better at the task through doing it, and
• Purpose – firm belief that the task matters, that it makes a difference.

3. Match up asks to motivators.

Whether you’re hoping to motivate volunteers to take on more, donors to contribute more, staff to bring more to the table, or even decision-makers to engage on your issue, the odds are good you’ll see better results over time if you match up your asks with what motivates action.

Are you looking for a little clicktism or just a few more envelopes stuffed? Attach a reward to it.

Are you looking for someone to organize their peers? Put the time into thinking through how you offer autonomy, mastery, and/or purpose as intrinsic to the task.

Many thanks to the great brains in the Web of Change community for helping us solidify this thinking. Englin Consulting is helping put the event together this year. Ping Shayna for more details and check out www.webofchange.org