A widely used approach to implementing organizational change is to communicate the goal, and then motivate people to reach for that goal. Typical approaches involve incentives for people to change their behavior, sometimes combined with disincentives to deter unwanted behavior. It's your basic carrot-and-stick approach. It works on donkeys and pigeons, so, hey, it should work on people, too. Except it doesn't work so well, because people are smarter than donkeys and pigeons.
And so it is with most motivation programs. Incentives can fail because they invite people to try to earn the incentives without exhibiting the desired behavior; disincentives can fail because they invite people to evade the disincentives even if they do exhibit the unwanted behavior. And neither incentives nor disincentives address any possible obstacles in the path to the goal.
The problem is related to a common mistake humans make when dealing with anything other than real objects. We tend to use the same thought patterns for manipulating abstract constructs as we use for real objects. Sometimes it works. Often it does not. The choice to treat abstract constructs as if they were real objects is called the reification error. [Levy 1997]
For example, project managers are often called upon to report periodically the percentage of work that's complete. They do so, with the understanding that the resulting number is an estimate of a social construct — work to be done. But many of the recipients of these reports regard them as measurements of real objects, like the number of miles from here to Cleveland. They commit the reification error.
Because motivation is a construct, we risk committing the reification error when we try to motivate people. Compared to other constructs, the risk is relatively high with motivation, because it's so similar to what we do with objects. We "encourage" an object by pulling it to a desired location; we "discourage" it by pushing it away from an undesired location.
Our experiences Compared to other constructs, the
risk of making the reification error
is relatively high with motivation,
because it's so similar to
what we do with objectswith objects are deep in our psyches, dating back to infancy, even before we could speak. That might be one reason why we try to apply those early experiences when motivating people. But people don't respond to pushing and pulling the way inanimate objects do, because they are, well, not inanimate. Unlike pots, pans, and rocks, people have minds of their own. To motivate people, we must take their minds into account.
Kurt Lewin's Force Field Analysis provides a model that works well. [Lewin 1964] People tend to do what they want to do, but only if they can. Communicating the goal, and explaining incentives and disincentives, can provide helping forces relative to reaching the goal. But obstacles — hindering forces — can sometimes cancel the helping forces, resulting in stasis. The hindrances in question here are contextual, arising not from the work itself, but from trying to do the work with the resources provided, in the context provided. Before we set about motivating people, verifying that we've removed all contextual obstacles is wise. A motivation program cannot make circumventing obstacles any easier, nor can it make impossible goals possible. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Organizational Change:
- Workplace Taboos and Change
- In the workplace, some things can't be discussed — they are taboo. When we're aware of taboos,
we can choose when to obey them, and when to be more flexible. When we're unaware of them, they can
limit our ability to change.
- Outsourcing Each Other's Kids
- Outsourcing is now so widespread that it has achieved status as a full-fledged management fad. But many
outsourcing decisions lack the justification that a full financial model provides. Here are some of
the factors that such a model should include.
- When Fear Takes Hold
- Leading an organization through a rough patch, we sometimes devise solutions that are elegant, but counterintuitive
or difficult to explain. Even when they would almost certainly work, a simpler fix might be more effective.
- Letting Go of the Status Quo: the Debate
- Before we can change, we must want to change, or at least accept that we must change. And somewhere
in there, we must let go of some part of what is now in place — the status quo. In organizations,
the decision to let go involves debate.
- Way Over Their Heads
- For organizations in crisis, some but not all their people understand the situation. Toxic conflict
can erupt between those who grasp the problem's severity and those who don't. Trying to resolve the
conflict by educating one's opponents rarely works. There are alternatives.
See also Organizational Change and Critical Thinking at Work for more related articles.
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