The
annual cry to the workers at the performance review of our large corporations is
do more with less. We get coerced and incentivized as the business models
recommend from the current playbooks of our big business schools. But the big
question for the fast moving growth enterprises is are their people driven or
incentivized?
The
guys in the successful start-ups are clearly driven, while the rest of us are
left toying with the size of bonuses or promises of a new gymnasium facility as
our incentives. 16-hour days don’t result from the idea that we’ll be able to
spend our lunch break on a new treadmill.
In
the latest issue of Experimental Brain Research, Minamimoto et al report on a study to check out the
origin of motivation on a repetitive task (1). One aim of the study was to determine
if the motivation was due to externally applied factors (incentives) or an
internal factor(s) (drive).
The
task was designed so the subjects had to press a bar, hold it while they saw a
patterned cue which would indicate the size of the prize. They then saw a red
marker indicating that they hold the lever and after a period of time it would
change to green so that they could release the lever. A blue marker indicated
that they could take the reward.
The
cue card indicated the size of the prize to tell the participants which were
more desirable activities. If the bar was released early or the reward not
taken promptly, the prize was forfeit and they were shown to be committing an
error. Repetitive and boring work, but not too difficult to accomplish.
Only two participants were put to work. They
were male rhesus monkeys and the reward came in the form of drops of water,
1,2,4 or 8 drops. As this was all the monkeys got to drink, 8 drops was a prize
indeed, a big incentive.
The
measure of the internal factors, the salt level in the blood, was continually
monitored as an indicator of thirst level. Higher osmotic pressure (more salt) meant
they were thirstier and had stronger drive, QED.
Now
results. Did the size of the reward make them pay more attention to getting it
right, or did their thirstiness make them do better? Well, a nice little
mathematical formula was derived to describe how the error rate decreased as
the thirst level increased.
If
the monkeys were very thirsty, they made damn sure the got some water, however
much. There was no way they would be casual about one or two drops and only
work for eight.
This
is clearly a lesson already understood by the 1% as the cash flows copiously
into their accounts and they allow it to trickle down in small drops to us 99%.
