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Harvard Business Review
October 2008, pages 132/133
(Volume 86, Number 10)
Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model
The authors of “Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model” (July-August 2008) offer useful insights and an elegant model. Most writers, however, are trapped by the rewards aspect of employee motivation, and, alas, Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee are no exception.
It simply does not follow from the research they present that rewards are—or should be—the primary lever to satisfy the drive to acquire, even though rewards appear to make sense in the short term and have become accepted as the optimal method of motivating people.
For example, the primary actions the authors suggest for addressing the drive to acquire (such as tying rewards clearly to performance) undermine the actions that they suggest for the drive to bond (like collaboration). Why would I share my best practices with you if we’re competing against each other for rewards linked to the best performance? Indeed, a preponderance of studies demonstrates that such rewards actually harm the organization, overall. (Even HBR’s own articles do not provide much in the way of support for rewards.)
There are many less-damaging ways to satisfy the drive to acquire. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense and The Knowing-Doing Gap, provide solid research on this topic, as does Alfie Kohn in his many books. W. Edwards Deming, Peter R. Scholtes, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and others have also detailed the significant long-term problems with using the rewards lever.
Kelly Allan
Senior Partner
Kelly Allan Associates
Columbus, Ohio
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