If you watched the video in my last blog post you heard Leadbeater using the term Pro-Ams, which means passionate amateurs who works to professional standards. Having written The Pro-Am Revolution: How enthusiasts are changing our economy and society (together with Paul Miller), Leadbeater seems to be a great fan of Pro-Ams and the work they achieve.
Pro-Ams are extremely dedicated and they are not working for money, they work for the love of what they are doing. This means that they, most of the time, are working without an extrinsic motivator (the money). Instead they are driven by an intrinsic motivator (the love). I, and many others, believe that intrinsic motivators are far more effective than extrinsic motivators. That is probably one reason to the Pro-Am´s achievements in product development and innovation and the core of successes like Linux and Wikipedia. I do not think it is a good idea for companies to stop paying their employees, but I do think companies need to focus more on the intrinsic motivators. As we are trying to create an innovation process this leads us to the following question.
Do we want the employees to behave more like Pro-Ams or do we want to engage external Pro-Ams in the innovation process? The answer might be both.
In this video clip Dan Pink talks more about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. You will probably be able to see more references to Dan Pink on this blog further on since both me and Sigrid are great fans.
If you happen to be an innovation-process-Pro-Am and want to contribute to our blog just write a comment.
This is really interesting. I think there is something worth investigate in these questions.
I think it’s strange if our only motivation for working is money. Is there really someone who works only for money? One motivation I think these people work for is there colleagues. I think the social coffee break is worth more to employees work motivation than anything else. If not, unsocial bitterness is the motivation for these workers…
Looking forward to see what you guys come up with.
/Ipa
Money is an unfortunate necessity in our society, which people need to get their hands on to survive, unless you go completely self-sufficient, which is not an option for most people. It is only in the western-world and societies with well-developed social safety nets that people expect jobs that “inspire them” or are “fun and challenging”. For the rest of the world people work to survive, literally. So yes there are people who only work for money but their motivation does not boil down to a simple wish of owning a BMW, for them it is about not dying, pure and simple.
Tanks for great comments! I agree with IPA that working only for money is a strange thing to do and I don’t think extrinsic motivators are effective. But as Glitch points out it people live under different conditions in different parts of the world. I have always believed that motivation should come from within regardless of ones living conditions, but if take it into an extreme context it gets tricky. Money is off course a great motivator if you are working to earn enough money to, literary, survive. Rewards like money is an extrinsic motivator but it can be a mean for surviving, which is an intrinsic motivator. Maybe money could be an intrinsic motivator is curtain context? What do you think?
Working for money or working for only self realization? It is a really interesting paradox to discuss. We want to be happy at work, then we want to be happy during our spare time and money are giving us comfort. Since today, we are able to change and try our skills at different working places, I don´t think money will be keeping us at the same place if we are not satisfied with our work. We also want to feel that we can contribute to our working conditions and tasks and help the development of both the organization and ourselves. Giving the employed a better chair to seat on or a comfortable and nice looking working uniform will be more appreciated then giving him more money. What if we could create conditions for everyone that are not based on salary, but instead are based on helping everyone equally; for example at home with housekeeping or giving transport from home to work? Working for benefits not for money!:)
Peace/NW
If you haven’t, look up the Hawthorne Effect.