What Really Motivates Us?

You have a task to assign to someone with whom you work.  Maybe that task is producing a certain number of widgets before 5 p.m. or maybe it’s writing a summary judgment brief to file next week.  What will motivate that person to complete that task and complete it well?  Money?  The possible recognition of Employee of the Month?  Or simply the desire to complete the task the best way she can?

According to Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, if the task is more like completing widgets, rewards like money and recognition are the best motivators.  But if your task is more like writing that brief, then tangible rewards are most likely to backfire in the long run.

But doesn’t making more money or garnering more recognition motivate everybody to do a good job?  Not according to Pink.

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The Face in the Window

John Luther Bryant was a happy guy as he drove down the dusty roads of rural Pickens County, Alabama.  Life was good on the family farm where he and his spinster sister, Miss Grace Bryant, worked to scratch out a living and raise enough food and chickens to support themselves while enjoying the peace and quiet of a simple country lifestyle.

John was a man of diminutive stature, some attributing that to poor nutrition as a child.  But he was strong, sinewy, and lithe — physical attributes he proudly put to good use working his day job as a sanitation engineer (garbage man) for the City of Gordo, Alabama.

As John drove into town he had no reason to suspect the fate he was about to face.  As was his regular practice, John and his coworker rode on the back of the Gordo garbage truck doing their regular route.  They hopped off at each house to empty the trash and then get back onto the truck to ride to the next block.

As the truck rumbled down the uneven streets of Gordo, the unexpected happened and John’s number was called. 

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Ombuds Perspective on Whistleblowing Laws

Last week, we had wonderful talk entitled Blowing the Whistle on Whistleblowing Laws.  Attorney Charles L. (Chuck) Howard is one of the few attorneys in the U.S. with extensive expertise in the legal issues of ombudsmen. Howard has a national practice in representing organizational ombudsmen at universities, multinational corporations, and research institutions.  His new book, entitled The Organizational Ombudsman: Origins, Roles and Operations–A Legal Guide, was just published by the American Bar Association (ABA) and is the nation’s definitive resource book about ombudsmen, mediation, and their impact in the workplace.

In this presentation, he explored how fear of retaliation limits the effectiveness of whistleblower laws and policies. There are hundreds of whistleblower laws in the United States that provide incentives for people to report misconduct and prohibit retaliation against them for doing so. While recoveries from laws like the False Claims Act are significant, the perception — and often the reality — of what happens to whistleblowers who do come forward is that they pay dearly for their actions. In addition to trying to reward whistleblowers, why are we not also looking for better ways to help people address workplace conflict or misconduct without having to be a whistleblower? Howard argued that an organizational ombudsman can help an organization address this gap between encouraging the reporting of misconduct and protecting those who raise issues.

Several of my students’ comments about the talk are below: 

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