If you’ve ever studied economics or business or taken a class in supervision, you’ve been taught the basics of motivation. If we reward a certain behavior, we get more of that behavior. If we punish, we get less. It works for teaching Shamus to jump through a fiery hope, so it must work for people, right?

Turns out, many recent studies show that larger rewards can lead to worse performance…especially for creative and cognitive work. The best companies thrive by implementing this knowledge. I’ve built buildings for some of them and marveled at how they treated their people. Now I understand the theory behind the management.

Regarding money, it’s still true that too little money demotivates. The secret seems to be to pay enough so the issue of money is taken off the table. Employees should be well paid, but producing great results that clearly warrant their salary.

So how do we manage to do that? The video below explains the process beautifully. When you have 10 minutes, watch it and take notes.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded

The three keys to motivation appear to be Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Let’s expand that a bit.

1. Autonomy: People want to be self-directed. They want to do something worthwhile. It’s our job as managers and supervisors to help them remove the barriers to their best performance.

2. Mastery: People want to get better at things. Whether practicing the guitar on weekends or writing articles for Wikipedia, people love that feeling of improvement.

3. Purpose: We all understand that we need to help our employer make a profit, but that doesn’t highly motivate most of us. When our work goes toward a larger purpose, our motivation grows.

I watched this video with my friend Randy, an amazing carpenter who grew to hate commercial construction work. He loved the message of the video. Randy recalled jerk bosses who tried to tell him exactly how to do things that he knew how to do better. He talked about how his mastery of the trade was so often discouraged and demeaned in the name of production (even though I know he got more done, and done right, than almost any carpenter I’ve worked with).

If you supervise or manage people in construction, think deeply about these three keys to motivation. Try to limit the old carrot and stick approach and move toward a method that works better. It will help you, it will help your employees and it will help the world.

By the way, a hat tip to John Poole and his blog Constructonomics: A construction industry blog that digs below bedrock. He’s a good writer and a thoughtful guy.