"Thou shall not attempt to motivate thy employees with money".

Regarding the First Commandment, the reality is - motivation is intrinsic, at least for anybody whose job requires creativity, so stop playing pop psychologist with your carrots and sticks (see July 2010 blog "Incentive Compensation - There's No Such Thing"). Our assumption is that if you want people to work better - motivate them. However, science has discovered that not only do rewards not work, but they actually do harm.

There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Science knows that those extrinsic motivators that business uses only work for a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances (such as line workers doing mechanical skills). Science also knows that rewards kill creativity and that the secret to high performance isn't risk and reward, but unseen intrinsic drive.

Unfortunately, our reward programs are built around carrots and sticks (reward and punishment). These if-then rewards destroy creativity. Science confirms what we know in our hearts - rewards by their very nature narrow our focus, and although they can work well for simple tasks where the goal is obvious - they do not work when creativity is involved. For engineering tasks, where creativity is all important, the reward not only narrows our focus, but often leads to an unintended goal, which may not be what you were hoping to achieve in the first place.

What really matters are the right-brained, creative conceptual abilities. You know, the kind that a computer can't do better, or a low cost provider doesn't do when pumping out rubber-stamped reports for little compensation. Consider your own engineering work. Do the problems you face follow a clear set of rules? Are the answers blatantly obvious? Do they require many decision points and unique answers? For these kinds of problems carrots and sticks simply don't work.

Researchers at MIT gave small, medium and large rewards for various tasks. Where only mechanical skills were involved, the higher the reward the better the performance - just like management has been telling us. However, once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, higher rewards did nothing to improve performance - in fact, it led to poorer performance.

Although money is not a motivator (for improved performance) it can be a serious de-motivator and here is where most get confused about the money. As it turns out, most examples you can cite regarding performance and money are negatives, and associated with someone being de-motivated - "Joe didn't get enough money so he left". Think back on any situation where you felt someone else "less worthy" than you got a bigger raise, a bigger bonus or promotion, and you get my point about money being a demotivater.

Traditional notions of management are great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement and creativity, self-direction works better where employees have a chance to collaborate, have a choice in what they do, and can improve and grow. Get the issue of money off the table.

I'll see you next blog when we take up the Second Commandment, "Thou shall not create an "objective" bonus program for God hath not endowed thee with such capacity".