Not all of us are driven by money

Philip Delves Broughton
12 Oct 2009

I was recently in San Francisco meeting salesmen at a large technology company. I asked them what kept them going through the many rejections every salesperson must endure.

Their managers said it was passion for the work, the joy of selling a useful product, doing something they were good at.

The salesmen themselves were more blunt. It was the money. A good product and well-run company coupled with their own talents meant they had a better shot at a great living at this company than at another.

These two views of motivation have long challenged company managers and individuals trying to make choices about their own careers.

Do we do it for the money? Or for a fuller set of psychological rewards? Are we simply coin-operated or more complex?

In his new play The Power of Yes, David Hare describes Sir Fred Goodwin, the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, being driven not just by greed but by what he calls "the thing itself".

And what is that? The thing that drives financiers to work long after they have made all the money they could spend in several lifetimes?

Or forces people to forego the best financial opportunity for work that is rewarding in other ways? Is motivation really so different for all of us?

The rewards system in financial services tends to distort our notions of how pay is linked to motivation.

One of the more extraordinary spectacles of the past two years has been watching bankers take government bailouts with one hand while clinging on to their lavish compensation plans with the other.

The bankers argued that unless they were properly compensated, they would not do the work of curing the sickness so many of them had helped cause.

Look more broadly around society and you find all kinds of organisations and institutions which think about motivation in a far deeper way. The military is the most extraordinary example.

History, traditions, rules and peer pressure are used to bind people together and motivate them to risk their lives.

Money never comes into it. Colonel Tim Collins's famous speech on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 mentions honour, aggression, respect and the virtues of clemency. He did not need to throw in promises of a financial bonus.

Teachers constantly, and reasonably, complain that they are not properly compensated, given their responsibility. But their point is not that they want to be paid like bankers.

Rather, they wish to be paid at a level which shows them some respect. Money is not the motivator, but when their pay is so low, it can be a de-motivator.

On an evening walk through Soho, you will find hundreds of well-educated people in media businesses who are working for relatively low wages in industries like advertising, design and journalism because the culture of these industries suits their personalities.

They would rather take a lower salary and do something they enjoy with like-minded colleagues than shoot for a higher salary a mile or two east in the City.

Similarly, many politicians choose the rewards of public service, power and visibility over maximising financial opportunity.

Though of course a successful political career can be cashed in later. It is now fashionable for companies to say that the main motivator for talented employees is not money but the desire to work in a place where they can learn, grow and have an impact on the world.

Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School recently published SuperCorp, in which she describes companies around the world which recognise "the strategic value of values".

By this she means companies which have high standards of conduct and a strong sense of "societal purpose". Sound principles, she argues, lead to sound long-term strategy.

They also attract and motivate good people. She quotes Lorenzo Zambrano, the CEO of Cemex, a Mexican cement-maker: "At first, we thought of our reputation conceptually, as something that we needed to keep improving.

"Now we know it affects our ability to attract the right people. After all, businesses are a network of people working toward the same end. And everyone has to be proud of what they're doing."

This ties in to arguments made by Daniel Pink, an American business writer and former speechwriter for Al Gore.

Pink says people with creative rather than analytical skills will rule the 21st-century economy. To motivate them takes more than monetary rewards.

Academic research conducted over the past 40 years has shown that financial incentives work best when people have very narrow tasks.

Ask them to fold more T-shirts per hour or make more scripted cold calls and the promise of extra money improves performance.

Ask them to solve a complex puzzle, however, and financial incentives do more harm than good. They impede creative problem-solving.

What motivates creative thinking are "intrinsic motivators" rather than externally applied carrots and sticks.

Think of a movie star who takes $20 million to appear in a big action movie and appears just to go through the motions.

Then put them on stage in Macbeth at union rates in a small theatre and watch them give their greatest performance.

Money may elicit one kind of performance, while the desire to impress peers and do good work may elicit another.

Pink argues that businesses must think of motivation as comprising three intrinsic factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. "Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives.

"Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves."

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this links closely with much modern research into the building blocks of happiness.

Make your employees happy and you will motivate them. Money helps - but it doesn't get you all the way there.