Good question I think.  What motivates me probably isn’t the same thing that motivates you. If you posed that question to a group of executives, what answers do you think you’d get?  My guess is a mix of frank, down-to-earth answers and textbook, jargon-laden ones.  If you asked your friends, what would they say?  Would you get any serious answers at all?  I was curious so I conducted the following highly sophisticated and wicked scientific bit of research.  On my Facebook wall, I posted the question “what motivates you in your work life?”… Here are some of the comments I received from friends:

Surprise… a few weren’t serious.  Maybe I should say a few were.  And as the list illustrates, people are looking forward to their time away from work.  Notably absent?  Money.  I would have expected at least one joke about money being the only motivator.  When I was in university (what we Canadians call college), someone gave me a key chain that said “Money isn’t everything… but it’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place.” (I went to school during the late 80s… Wall Street (i.e. the movie) attitudes were pervasive in business schools).  Were they trying to tell me I had no heart… no soul?  Anyway, I was a little surprised not to even see the word money appear in any of my friends’ responses to my question.

Earlier this year, I picked up a book called “Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel Pink. I’ve cracked it open but not yet had the time to read it (I’m still reading this and this… by the way, this is worth reading too).  A little while back, our CEO sent me the following video, related to Dan Pink’s “Drive” …

Pretty interesting.  Although a lot of us intuitively get it, I guess I was a little surprised (not to mention a lot impressed) that autonomy, mastery and purpose far outpaced money as a motivator.  I’m sure you, like I, have come across managers who think it’s all about money.  And that would explain how the so-called conventional wisdom is not at all aligned with what’s really going on.  So, is money completely unimportant?  Personally, I don’t think so.

I think underlying all of this is the question of fairness… At our core, we all want to be treated fairly.  When it comes to our work lives, part of that fairness is pay.  Now, for most people, I think money does become secondary as long as the “fairness principle” I’ve noted is satisfied.

“So what?” you ask.  I’ll quote my 2nd year HRM professor… “We can’t motivate someone else to do anything… all we can do is create an environment that facilitates someone in motivating themselves.”  Money is one piece of the environment that a manager creates for his or her team… as are autonomy, mastery and purpose… and a lot of other things.

If you want your people to be motivated… you need to do a lot of things right… before they even begin to motivate themselves. Not easy… but entirely necessary, if you care at all about long term success.

Update: 8/10/2010: 11:43pm ADT… A new FB friend just commented on my question: “Am i the only greedy one in the bunch – it’s the paycheck baby!”… There’s always one…