Incentive - September 2008 - (Page 17) HEADLINES The ABCDs of Motivation Harvard study condenses motivation factors into four basic human drives BY NATHAN ADKISSON I n 2002 Nitin Nohria and Paul Lawrence, two Harvard Business School professors, explained in their book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices that all human motivation can be parsed into drives to acquire, bond, learn and defend. Last month, they published a report in the Harvard Business Review modifying this model and expanding it. They renamed the “drive to learn” the “drive to comprehend,” because they believe that comprehension is a more meaning- ful level of learning. It also allows the authors to call the model the “ABCD of Motivation” after those four drives: to acquire, to bond, to comprehend and to defend. The report describes the “levers” that control those drives specifically in the workplace. This information may be valuable for managers seeking to achieve the highest productivity possible from their employees. Nohria says the most unexpected part of his research was discovering that each drive is modified best by just one of the levers. “We expected that every lever would affect all of the drives,” he says. “The results were startling. You can try to create rewards that encourage innovation, and foster collaboration, but rewards that try to do all of those things get too complicated. Incentives are not the best choice to engage those other drives. You could use a screwdriver to open everything, but it would be best to use it to open a screw.” For more detail on those motivational levers, VISITINCENTIVEMAG.COM/HARVARD incentivemag.com | September 2008 | Incentive | 17 http://www.incentivemag.com/harvard http://www.tumispecialmarkets.com http://incentivemag.com
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