The following are my own personal views and do not represent the views of my current or past employers or affiliated organisations.A while ago, there was a survey 'what motivates you at work?' that I was invited to participate in. This also had a reward of recognition for contributors attached to it. So, motivated ;^) I set to think about the topic and search for answers. Finally, it evolved into a model that perhaps someone else can also use to their own situation.
When one searches on the web one can find a ton of information on this topic. Mostly, there is a lot more information on systematic studies for 'how organisations can motivate individuals' as compared to information on 'how I as an individual can evaluate my own motivation' at my workplace, within my team and within my department/organisation and it's place in the world.
So, here is a very minimalist model that I eventually came up with to support those who want to evaluate/understand their own motivational levels they experience within their team/department/organisation. The goal being that this model would eventually guide one to understanding why they are where they are on the motivational plane.
The premise is that 'motivation' can come from within and also from the environment one is placed in. The centre peice of this model is the person (the 'ME') that is undergoing this self-evaluation.
The text within the boxes are just some guiding examples, fill them with your own.
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| Evaluating motivation within, starting with ME as a point of reference |
ME
In my opinion, the two layers of basic needs psychological and safety/security from Maslow's heirarchy find their place here. These are similar to what is referred to as Hygeine factors (status, job security, salary, continuity etc.) in Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory.MY TEAM/DEPARTMENT/ORGANISATION
For the perspective on motivation at the workplace/department/organisation level, this cool animation made by adapting Dan Pink's talk is definitely worth a watch. In this short talk he mentions about the motivational model that is harnessed by the open source revolution (linux in particular) and summarizes take away lessons.Although, the main focus of Dan Pink's talk seems to be 'how organisations can motivate individuals' and 'make the world a better place' one can relate to that from a 'ME' point of view of evaluation as well (and the animation is well .. 'engaging' .. keeps you motivated to continue watching till the end).
MY WORLD
Being in touch with the world or a community is very livening, crucial and nurturing after the mastery stage in a person's evolution to continue to stay highly motivated and evolve further. In a lot of ways this is analogous to the 'social needs' that are at the top of Maslow's heirarchy.In my opinion, a major factor that fueled the open source software revolution is this influence and feedback mechanism it enabled a software developer to have with the world. In this case, maybe with a developer and user community to begin with. The world is larger than and is a super-set of an organisation. This means the potential of influence a master developer can have is exponentially larger than he/she could have on the world at large from within an organisation. This factor enables skilled software developers to be 'engaged'.
On this particular topic, Eric S Raymond's book 'The Cathederal and Bazaar' is worth reading where he talks about his experiences with fetchmail as open source software. Although the book's rights are with O'Reilly you can still read the original essay and listen to the stand-up talks from the link above.
REFERENCES
- Maslow's heirarchy on Wikipedia
- Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory on Wikipedia
- Drive: The suprising truth about what motivates us - Dan Pink on Dan Pink's Website
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary - Eric S. Raymond on Wikipedia
2 comments:
Very interesting. Quite contrary to what we tend to think regarding human reaction not always being proportional to reward. Good read and informative video
In my opinion, an organisation's business model is its real connect to the world. Business models are ideas championed and propagated by organisational leaders who believe in them. This, when done well, takes root and influences most of what is done in an organisation. Along the way, it defines features required of software solutions built to support this business model. For a software architect/developer working in an organisation this is 'the connect to the world' outside.
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