Happiness, Motivation, and the Power of Purpose
In recent weeks we’ve considered happiness from a variety of perspectives: what makes us happy, what doesn’t, and why we’re so bad at distinguishing between the two. Sometimes the insights offered have been surprising: turns out that getting more stuff or making loads of money doesn’t make us happy, while giving money away does.
In this TEDTalk, Dan Pink — author of one of my favorites books in recent years, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
What might this mean for the way we organize our work, our homes, our congregations? What kind of insight does it shed on our roles as parents and teachers, employers and employees, leaders and volunteers? Watch the video and then let me know. And if you liked Dan’s talk, you might also enjoy his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. It’s a very good read and goes much more in-depth with the research that informed his TEDTalk. (I’ll put his video trailer for that book below.)
Note: If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the videos.
When I became an engineering manager in a conservative engineering company, I called in my employees and told them I would try to incorporate suggestions to make their jobs better (This was nearly 30 years ago). After a couple of days a few of them approached me asking for alternate work schedules. One person wanted to work the overnight shift vs day shift, one person wanted to be able to leave work by 3 pm so he could be home when his children arrived home. One person asked if he could come in later to work. I told them I would check into hours changes. I studied the Procedures and found that if I could show a benefit to the company I could officially changes someone’s hours by a letter. These were all salaried employees. So I wrote the letters with the appropriate business reason and changed each person’s working hours to the employee specification. I just made the procedures work for me to help my employees by showing benefit to the company. Here is what I later learned, in each case these employees were paying high sitter rates for the one or two hours that the spouse and employee were not at home with their children. Just a slight change in work hours saved them a lot of $$ on baby sitting costs. More importantly was the peace of mind it gave to the employees knowing that their children were safe. But I also found that productivity went up significantly. coffee klatches disappeared and when issues came up the employees brought them to my attention. Also, the group completed their tasks on time and within budget. Our backlog of work went from over 2 years down to less than 3 weeks over a 15 month period– for working engineering issues this is phenomenal.
I carried this philosophy forward for the rest of my corporate career. I was also one of the first managers to push for telecommuting when it made sense. I believe when people are in charge of their work schedule, getting things done and can set some of their own goals they perform better. So I agree Money doesn’t always solve the problem or increase productivity.
I now do career and personal development coaching in my post corporate life and I refrain from setting the goals for clients. I get them to set their own goals and then make a contract with themselves and sign the contract. It is amazing how quickly they achieve their goals.