HBR on Employee Motivation
This post is a commentary on HBR’s article Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model. The article is paywalled, so I’ll just offer a summary and some commentary. (Also, let me make a plug for Harvard Business Review. HBR has a huge library of articles covering a broad range of business topics. It’s been an excellent source of material for me in advising companies and coaching leaders.)
What Drives Us
There are a variety of human motivation models out there. I talk about Daniel Pink’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose in my post below, where I make a case for fulfillment as a fourth component in his model.
The HBR article takes the “Four Drives” model from Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria’s book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices and measures them against several companies. The Four Drives model proposes that human behavior is motivated by four innate drives that influence our choices and actions:
1. The Drive to Acquire (D1): This drive is about obtaining material resources, experiences, and status. It includes not only the need for tangible goods but also for power, recognition, and achievement. It motivates competition and the pursuit of success.
2. The Drive to Bond (D2): This drive focuses on forming social relationships and connections. It is the need to feel part of a group, whether family, friends, teams, or organizations. It fosters collaboration, loyalty, and empathy, and it is critical for building trust and strong social networks.
3. The Drive to Learn (D3): This drive is about curiosity and the desire to make sense of the world. It encompasses the need to explore, understand, and make sense of our environment. It is fulfilled by engaging in meaningful work, problem-solving, and gaining new knowledge and skills.
4. The Drive to Defend (D4): This drive is about protecting ourselves, our resources, and our loved ones. It triggers when we feel threatened, leading to defensive reactions. It can manifest as resistance to change, a need to justify oneself, or a desire to protect one’s values and beliefs.
(source: ChatGPT)
The HBR article shares some data from several companies that have specific processes and cultures designed to address all four drives, and they make the case that companies that address these four drives in equal measure create the most successful business outcomes and the most engaged employees.
Company Behaviors
While you should read the article for several great examples of companies putting actions into practice, there’s a helpful table in the article that lists specific actions companies and leaders can take to address each drive.
(source: HBR)
There’s a lot about this to love.
First, the actions suggested are not all “feel-good, people-first” actions. This table is about how to get results while keeping employees happy and motivated. For example, the Acquire Drive is best addressed with a reward system that fairly and honestly rewards performance while also requiring that average and poor performance be addressed. Any startup leader will tell you that managing poor performance quickly is critical to maintaining execution speed. I have sometimes failed to address poor performance quickly enough as a leader, and I’ve always regretted it.
Second, the model specifically encourages companies to foster camaraderie and friendship. I love this! Who wants to work at a place where everyone is just an automaton putting in their hours and then heading home or signing off? And yet, that’s exactly what so many companies are like. In fact, some startup cultures encourage it. “We’re a professional sports team, not a family.” That philosophy is a fallacy. Sorry to break the news to you, but you’re a family whether you like it or not, and in your case, your family is dysfunctional.
Third, transparency and fairness in decisions! This is perhaps the most important point. As I’ve said in previous posts, there is very little in a company that must be kept secret. The more openly an executive team shares what they talk about and why they make the decisions they make, the more the employees will trust them. Everyone thinks they do this, but this action is about radical transparency and consistent, fair, and logical decision-making. I’ll write a future post about the amazing level of transparency I learned at Zapier (see Zapier’s Values).
Finally, I love business scorecards, and this table is another helpful scorecard for measuring your company, whether you’re an employee, leader, or founder. So, take a moment to go through the four drives. Grade yourself on each action. List examples of where your company is or isn’t living up to the actions, and make a plan to improve.