|
|
|
|
Paying for creativity 18 April 2005
According to this week’s issue of Business Week, Corporate America places a high premium on those managers who can get the best results from their creative employees.
“Managing creativity is the must-have skill for today's managers”
Bruce Nussbaum in Business Week, April 18, 2005
While it may seem like “management” and “creativity” are mutually exclusive, there’s been quite a bit of rigorous research on managing creativity over the last twenty years. Harvard professors like Teresa Amabile, Dorothy Leonard, and Rob Austin have undertaken major studies to understand what motivates (and demotivates) creative performance.
Many of the management practices that work well in routine and systematized tasks don’t apply very well when managing for a creative result. One of the most provocative findings relates to the role that financial rewards play in encouraging creative thinking.
Amabile’s research indicates that managers can encourage creativity in their organizations, but that money isn’t the best mechanism by which to do it. Recognition, flexibility, and passion play a much more important role than financial incentives in encouraging creativity in business.
As Prof. Amabile told Fast Company:
“Bonuses and pay-for-performance plans can … be problematic when people believe that every move they make is going to affect their compensation. In those situations, people tend to get risk averse.
“Of course, people need to feel that they're being compensated fairly. But our research shows that people put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized.”
Prof. Teresa Amabile in an interview with Fast Company, Dec. 2004
This should be good news for business. Companies can save some money, and get better results, by using management techniques and approaches which may be less expensive than pay-for-performance.
Until managers understand the findings from this research, however, they will most likely take actions that are counter-productive – putting in place reward systems that actually discourage the creativity they are trying to tap.
In a recent panel discussion, I asked the audience to rate their agreement with a statement that related creativity to financial incentives. The results (and the question) are reproduced below. More than 35 percent of the audience of about 30 managers strongly agreed that creativity responded positively to pay for performance, although Amabile’s research indicated the opposite.
Managing Creativity – Research counters intuition
Creative workers respond strongly and positively to intrinsic motivation:
Ø The challenge of solving a problem in a new way; Ø The process of working towards a solution; Ø The satisfaction of a job well-done, or simply Ø The pleasure of the work.
Michael Jordan, the great basketball player, had a “love-of-the-game” clause inserted into his contracts that allowed him to play basketball in pick-up games any time he wished.
Financial rewards are extrinsic motivators – historically, money has been used as a means to induce employees to do things that they would not otherwise want to do. Hence “thank God it’s Friday.” While many creative people may get paid well, the work of Amabile and others demonstrates that pay is not the driving motivation for most.
No wonder managing creativity is such a valued skill. Based on recent research, it is possible that many companies are spending a great deal of money doing precisely the wrong thing.
More Information:
|
|
All content on this site licensed under a Creative Commons License.
|
