Motivation: The Rainbow’s End?

“It is not the job of the manager to motivate employees. That is impossible. It’s a manager’s job to create a happy work environment in which employees are naturally motivated.” (Alexander Kjerulf: “Happy Hour is 9 to 5”)

This statement has stuck with me for 10 days since I first read it. Why? Perhaps because it is so simply expressed, and yet so profound. More likely though, it is because it seems so blindingly true!

Yet that cannot possibly be. A quick Google search on the word ‘motivation’ returned an incredible 5,640,000 hits. The top 5 sponsored links were:
•    Improve Staff Motivation (Leading rewards scheme provider)
•    Motivation (Reward and incentive schemes to improve employee motivation)
•    Employee Surveys (Try something new)
•    Employee Motivation (How are your employees doing?)
•    Improve Staff Motivation (For a wide range of incentive schemes….)

Interestingly the 7th sponsored link was “Book Motivational Speaker” and a follow-up Google search of motivational speakers returned 131,000 hits!

Clearly there are whole industries focussed on motivating people. With so many people earning livelihoods, and in many cases pretty lucrative livelihoods, from motivating others, it seems pretty far-fetched to say that it is impossible to motivate people. And it would be stretching the bounds of cynicism to suggest that all these people are charlatans! Yet, both positions cannot be true. 

As ever when two opposing positions both appear to be true, it is best to go back to definitions. Webster’s dictionary defines ‘motivate’ as ‘to provide with a motive.’ Motive, in turn is defined as ‘that within an individual, rather than without, that incites him to action.’ This is crucial, for it means motive is innate, driven by personal values. The whole purpose of motivating people, however, is to get them to do what you want them to do rather than what they want.  This can only happen when both parties want the same thing. Thus outside forces can do no more than inspire behaviour that coincides with the individual’s personal values.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.” Thus, if motivation is not impossible, it is very nearly so, and certainly beyond most managers’ capabilities. It is unreasonable to expect managers to be able to align the various and variable values of all the different people for whom he is responsible. American entrepreneur Russell Simmons put it this way: “Your happiness ultimately comes from the way you work, not where you work.” 

So trying to motivate employees is rather like looking for the fabled pot at the end of the rainbow. We can all see the rainbow, and to that extent it exists, but it really has no end and certainly no pot of gold at the end. The Harvard Business Review article was spot on when it stated, “Most companies have it all wrong. They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them.”