Today’s post comes courtesy of Gareth Murran, Innovation Product Manager, who comes at talent management from the angle of enchantment.

I’ve just finished reading a chapter of Guy Kawasaki’s latest book, Enchantment. The chapter, entitled “How to Enchant  Your Employees”, is based on the work of Daniel Pink. The discussion centres on motivation and the critical question is: what motivates us to work?

Pink finds that for non-trivial tasks, higher monetary incentives tend to lead to worse performance. Money works when the task is repetitive, but  it doesn’t for jobs that require creativity. This behaviour has been found to be very common, manifesting itself across a range of fields including economics, psychology and sociology.

Whilst standard monetary motivators work for simple tasks, Pink reveals that in anything more complex, financial incentives do not function in the same way. Instead, he identifies three additional factors that motivate higher employee performance:

1. Autonomy – The ability to direct the course of one’s own life and the work that is performed.
2. Self Challenge & Mastery – The overarching desire for people to improve themselves, gain experience and get better at what they enjoy.
3. Purpose – The reasons behind your role: Undertaking tasks for personal gain and profit is not very motivating on its own, but  a sense that you are making the world a better place gained from succeeding at tasks which improve lives is. Overall, the key is having a well defined purpose to your work and making money at the same time – now that is motivating.

Each of these factors require employees who are actively engaged with their work, understand the reasons behind it and feel challenged and focused on their own pathway to personal development. It follows is that each individual’s motivation for self-improvement through learning is key to an organisation achieving its business goals and successful talent management. If they are properly motivated, employees will contribute to the business by meeting their own performance goals.

The book is is well worth reading, and overall Kawasaki captures the importance – and the art – of believing in an idea that delivers something entirely unique to the customer. The power of a really good idea to transform the marketplace and individual customer experiences is huge, and Kawasaki offers a wealth of insights to help businesses and entrepreneurs tap into that potential.