On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Luke S Crawford <[email protected]> wrote:
> Brian Mathis <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> It would also be helpful to study economics and follow some of the
>> other recent ideas about what drives people to do things. It's not
>> tech, but neither is management. You need to start studying and
>> understanding people as much as you do computers.
>
> Figuring out what motivates your people is really important. Personally,
> I don't think management books are particularly helpful in that regard,
> but it's an important problem you need to focus on and experiment with.
Then you're not reading the right books or are not focusing on the
right things they are trying to tell you. There's no shortage of
books written by successful businesspeople who are no more than Jocks
who got lucky and think they have the answer to everything. You don't
want those books, but you don't know it until you read them. If
nothing else, they give you a different perspective, which is helpful.
However, there are other books out there that are good and give you
useful information.
> The thing about the management books is that they are usually a paragraph
> or so of interesting idea padded out to 200 pages.
ou're too used to tech books. Pretty much all other types of books
are written this way, and they are that way for a reason. You will
learn much better by seeing a principle applied in various scenarios,
than reading only the principle itself. Humans learn by internally
mimicking what they are seeing or being told, and this has been shown
to be almost as good as actually performing the action yourself.
That's why the scenarios are valuable.
> a few months back I read "drive" by Daniel Pink. So his thesis is that
> money is not what primarily drives people (okay.. that's certainly true for
> some people.) but then he goes off into trying to pretend that your
> corporation isn't about money, something that is a huge turn off to most
> geeks. (I mean, it's basically impossible to pretend a corp is about
> something other than money without sounding fake, and sounding fake is
> the worst thing you can do around geeks.)
It's been shown time and again that money does NOT drive people. Not
having enough of it does, but once you have enough to be comfortable
it ceases to be a motivator. This is not anecdotal; it has been
proven in numerous studies.
Money is an external motivator, and as such can not sustain motivation
over long periods of time. The only thing that can do that is
internal motivation, which comes from personal satisfaction from the
work people do, or various other factors. These are the things you
need to find for each person individually.
> But there were some good ideas. Even though the corporation is about
> money, that doesn't mean that the corporation's relationship with the
> employee needs to be only about money... he did talk about career
> development and interpersonal relationships and helping employees reach
> their personal goals, etc... which are good ideas all, but eh, I felt
> like the book could have been a very good 10 page essay, and that is
> how most management books feel to me.
>
> The thing is, what drives different people varies pretty widely. You
> have to experiment to figure out what drives your people.
>
> For example, I've been trying to get the most out of my main sysadmin for
> while... and money doesn't seem to be doing it. I gave him a raise,
> and he left his other job, but he hasn't really sold me many more of his
> hours, which was my goal behind the raise. During crunch time,
> I'll often declare double-pay days... but I find I don't really get
> more out of him on double-pay days than I do on crunch days when
> I don't declare double-pay. I don't even get more hours.
I think you've proven my point that money is not a good motivator.
Additionally, you might be surprised to find out that what you are
doing is actually counterproductive. Offering more money for certain
things you are causing the quality of the work to decline. This TED
video explains exactly what I'm talking about. I strongly urge you to
watch it:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
> I find that the only thing that really gets him moving more than
> usual is sitting down and working with him. In a lot of ways,
> it makes a lot of sense; I mean, he's at the beginning of his career
> and making a small fraction of what he will in a few years, so
> it makes sense that he'd value training/experience more than cash on
> the barrel head. And really, it's good for me, too... I find I
> screw off much less when I'm working with him, and like most
> arrogant people, I really enjoy teaching. Especially when the
> student is bright and picks things up quickly; it makes me feel
> like I'm a good teacher.
>
> (note, I'm really only figuring this out now... yeah, I haven't been
> the brightest student here.)
In this scenario you are providing an internal motivator to your
sysadmin. You are showing him respect by giving him your time and
knowledge, and that will be payed back by him in the drive to work.
Those are the sorts of things you need to tap into to motivate people.
However, you're off track here by thinking it has something to do with
him building his resume (that would be an external motivator). No one
thinks like that on a day-to-day basis. He is finding the value in
your respect and teaching of him, not some vague future promise of
looking better on paper to someone in an HR department. Resume
building is important, but it's not a motivator.
> On the other hand, my brother, who is in a similar place in his career, and
> who is also pretty bright is almost as mercenary as I am. He's /very/
> interested in any double pay hours, and not all that interested in
> work at the regular rate.
As you will see in the TED video I posted above, you both may be doing
a disservice to yourselves and your customers by focusing so much on
the money aspect. They are probably not getting the best from you,
and you are probably not giving your best.
Racking up hours and making money is important, but if that's truly
your only motivation, your work life will feel hollow and draining.
As you are a business owner, I would bet that your real internal
motivation is creating and running the business, and the money aspect
is simply feedback that you are doing that successfully.
> --
> Luke S. Crawford
> http://prgmr.com/xen/ - Hosting for the technically adept
> http://nostarch.com/xen.htm - We don't assume you are stupid.
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