Fifty years of science in 90 seconds

- Let's talk about motivation. It's one of those topics that everybody in organization seems to know a lot about. Trouble is much of what people know is actually assumption, actually intuition. What I want to talk about is science because over the last 50 years, a group of social scientists all over the world have taken a headed rigorous analytic look at what really motivates people on the job. They've done laboratory experiments, field studies, lately, they've been using big data and they've come to a conclusion, a truth essentially about motivation on the job that is essential for all of us to know. This finding is powerful but it's also relatively simple, so simple that I can summarize it in 90 seconds. Here goes, there's a certain kind of reward that we use organizations, psychologists call it a controlling contingent reward. That's too complicated for me. I like to call it an if then reward as in if you do this, then you get that. If you do this, then you get that. Here's what 50 years of science tells us not about all rewards, but about if then rewards. If then rewards are extremely effective for simple tasks with short time horizons, why? Because we love rewards. You dangle a reward in front of me, you've got my attention but you've got my attention like this, blocking out all distractions, looking straight ahead. That is a great frame of mind if the task is algorithmic, simple, routine and I can see the finish line. However, the same body of science tells us that if then rewards are far less effective for complex tasks with longer time horizons, why? It's the same reason. If then rewards get us to look like this. For complicated tasks, you don't want to look at it like this, you want to look at it over here, over here, combining the things. You want to have enough energy to get to that finish line, which is far far are away. So distilled to its essence, if then rewards, great for simple when short-term tasks not so great for complex and long-term tasks, that's 50 years of science. And what we need to do in our organizations is this; we are using if then rewards for everything that people do. So when they work, we pat ourselves on the back for being great leaders but when they don't work, we scratch our heads and we're not sure why. So what we should be doing is applying if then rewards for simple tasks with short time horizons but go to a different regime for complex tasks with longer time horizons and I want to show you how to build organizations and motivational systems that lead to enduring motivation for the kind of complex, creative, complicated work that most white collar workers are doing today.