• Kyocera reached 2,000 million dollars in sales over thirty years, almost without debt.

• Hanover grew 50% quicker than the rest of the industry over ten years.

I strongly believe that human kind was wiser in the past, in terms of spirituality, than we are today - Henry Ford, 1926

Many managers have two major misconceptions about motivation: One is that some employees are unmotivated. Strictly speaking, this is inaccurate. As long as a person chooses goals and expends a certain amount of effort to achieve them, he or she is, by definition, motivated. What managers really mean is that some employees are not motivated to behave in the way they would like them to behave. The second misconception is that one person can directly motivate another. This view is inaccurate because motivation comes from within a person. What managers can do is to create the circumstances that influence staff to do what is best for the firm as a whole.

Following Taylor, many management theorists devised techniques of behaviour modification on the assumption that employees are motivated to complete a task by being promised a reward of some kind. Many times the reward is nothing other than a payment or a bonus; but, sometimes it is a token or privilege, such as ringing a bell (commonly used in sales) or some not so symbolic reward such as a bigger cubicle. This management style has proved to be inefficient, because it cannot induce creativity and innovation.

The key is to pay attention to the metaneeds of the individuals - to realize that a job is not only a way of getting paid but a way of living, and the first is very different from the second. Never forget that great results are produced by higher motivated people - from Stonehenge to the Pyramids, from the Gothic cathedrals to the XXIth century corporation. However, motivation is not a matter of quantity - and when we say higher motivated persons, we mean metamotivated people.

Oriental philosophy showed us that every task, even the more repetitive and simple, can be done with 'mindfulness'. The challenge of the new century is to give employees the opportunity of uplifting jobs. It is not an easy task. It requires wisdom, and the only way to achieve wisdom is by looking at metaneeds. The manager should be a master, the employee his or her disciple. We can make ordinary work to become a martial art - and if we do it, we shall know we are in the right path.


A dominant myth

When Taylor and his followers introduced “scientific management”, they assumed the concept of homo economicus, “economic man” - the view that people are motivated only by economic variables - material wages and rewards.

This view is strongly rooted in western culture, where we are raised with the lost paradise myth - on which Adam and Eve were thrown out of Paradise and Adam was condemned by God to win his bread with the sweat of his brow. This dominant metaphor leads us to think that man is motivated to work exclusively by fear of hunger.

The proponents of the scientific management thought that it was enough to select the worker - to look for someone physically able to do the tasks - teach him the best working method and establish his payment according to his efficiency in order to get him work at full capacity. Still today, many managers choose to relate payment according to the worker’s level of production. This sort of “machine-man” was depicted with in Charlie Chaplin's great motion picture, "Modern Times."


Hawthorne

During this stage of management evolution, hundreds of scientific studies were carried out to set up different ways of improve machine-man's capability. One of these studies was developed starting in 1927 in a plant of the Western Electric Company, located in the Hawthorne suburb of Chicago. To everyone's surprise, it led to conclusions that threw doubt on the "economic man" idea - scientific management is a simplistic idea that misleads managers. The studies discovered something that may seem pretty obvious to us today - that people are not machines.

Nevertheless, psychology itself was still linked to the old paradigm of the machine-man, and it took a long time to provide management with an advanced understanding of the worker as a complex human person. This is the reason why, traditionally, so many managers still use only two ways to motivate - carrots and sticks.

Perhaps today, managers are more likely to use the carrot than the stick but the odd thing is that research has shown that carrots are not the answer either. People are no more productive when offered a reward than they are when they are given fair treatment satisfaction of their needs [Deutsch, 1985].


Theory Z

When William Ouchi brought us his "Theory Z" (often referred to as the "Japanese" management style, though based on Edwards Deming's famous "14 points"), he invited managers to build organizational cultures where employees are more participative and capable of performing many and varied tasks. Theory Z emphasises things such as job rotation, broadening of skills, generalisation versus specialisation, and the need for continuous training of the employee. Theory Z is beyond what McGregor referred to as Theory Y.

1. Theory Z (empowerment)
2. Theory Y (participative)
3. Theory X (authoritative)


Man as mechanism?

The fact is that psychology was driven by a mechanistic and reductionist viewpoint until the middle of the XXth century. Bugental [1964] traces three steps in the development of psychological theory - behaviorism, psychoanalysis and humanism.

Behaviourism grew out of the work of John B. Watson, who based his work in Pavlov's ideas of “conditioning”. His view is that that behaviour can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. Its significance for psychological treatment has been profound, making it one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy. It saw a revival with the work of the American psychologist and author Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) who conducted research on shaping behaviour through positive and negative reinforcement.

Psychoanalysis stems, of course, from Freud and his followers who focused on the unconscious in the human psyche which, they stressed, must be combined with the conscious mind in order to produce a healthy human personality. Although it is, at least in part, less attached to the mechanistic viewpoint, according to many psychologists, it still considers the human being in a reductionist way, looking at him from the outside.

Humanistic psychology usually prefers qualitative research methods over the quantitative approach of the former two, giving emphasis to people's actual lived experience rather than to externally measurable behaviour. From this point of view, the use of quantitative methods in the study of the human mind and behaviour is misguided - because it considers the person more an object than a subject.

Humanistic psychology can be traced back in history at least to Maslow's hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation" and later to Frederick Herzberg, when he introduced the so-called “Two Factor Theory of Human Motivation." Roughly speaking, the relation between Maslow and Herzberg can be seen as:

• Motivation Factors: being, esteem, and belonging needs
• Hygiene Factors: safety and physiological needs

The higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy may be divided in two sub-layers: self-actualization and self-transcendence, grouping the four lower levels together as “deficit needs” while self-actualization and self-transcendence remain grouped as “being needs”. At the top of the hierarchy, self-transcendence needs are also sometimes referred to as spiritual needs.


Peak experiences

In 1996, Beatriz Fama began to direct “Success Workshops” for a direct selling company and the results were amazing: the chosen team ended as “champions”. The key was to teach them yoga, meditation, and “dream coaching”, to make dreams come true. This kind of “coaching” - which might sound a little esoteric - is based in what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences." Maslow believed that we should study ancient techniques such as yoga and meditation to cultivate those peak experiences as a way of providing a route to achieve personal growth and fulfillment.

According to Maslow, the practice of meditation and specially devised physical activities create experiences that are "ego-transcending, and bring a sense of purpose to the individual and also a sense of integration and belonging. That is why peak experiences are also called “transpersonal experiences” and the techniques used to achieve them are sometimes called “transpersonal practices”. Maslow showed that individuals that have such transpersonal or peak experiences are most likely to be self-actualized, mature, healthy, and self-fulfilled.

If you play a sport, you may occasionally reach a peculiar mental state where everything seems to happen on its own. It is sometimes referred to as the "zone". Whether you are swimming, running, playing golf or football, suddenly you just flow into the activity, free of analytical mental processes. This peculiar state of mind resembles what happens when you reach a peak experience by transpersonal practices.

In transpersonal practice the goal is to achieve those peak experiences and to maintain them as long as possible - even to retain the mental state after the meditation is finished. As Ken Wilber, a psychologist highly influenced by Maslow, said of peak experiences:
"In order for higher development to occur, those temporary states must become permanent traits."

Wilber was, in his early career, a leader in “transpersonal psychology”, the distinct school of psychology that is interested in studying human experiences which transcend the traditional boundaries of the ego.

Transpersonal psychology considers traditional psychology and spirituality as two complementary means for human development. What is distinctive in this school is that it does not focus only on pathology (what goes wrong) but also in personal development (what can, and will, go right.) In 1969, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof - the father of holotropic breathwork - and Anthony Sutich were the initiators behind the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.


Metamotivation

In his 1968 work, "Towards a Psychology of Being", Maslow introduced the notion of “being values”, also called “B-values”. These are the highest level of needs and are sometimes called "metaneeds." Many people never reach this stage of development and never encounter peak experiences. They will meet their ordinary needs, but fail to progress further because they do not embrace - or are not allowed to embrace - the B-values.

In his later works, Maslow introduced the idea of metamotivation to explain the transpersonal view of higher needs [Maslow, 1980]. People who look for self- transcendence have already satisfied, at least in part, their ordinary needs, and now are motivated in a higher sense towards what he called metamotivation.

Combining the later and earlier Maslow with Herzberg we can devise a new arrangement of factors to classify human needs (and metaneeds):

1. Metamotivation Factors: being or spiritual needs
2. Motivation Factors: esteem, and belonging needs
3. Hygiene Factors: safety and physiological needs


Dealing with Metamotivation

In 1990, Peter Senge introduced his book “The Fifth Discipline”. He interviewed several successful managers in top companies and he found that many of them were actually interested in helping their employees to develop their higher needs and even metaneeds.
One of the managers he interviewed was Bill O’Brian, CEO of Hanover Insurance. O’Brian told Senge that: “… our traditional hierarchic organizations are not designed to satisfy the higher needs of the people, such as self-esteem and self-actualization. Entrepreneurial troubles will follow until the organizations begin to attend these needs of their employees."

Another manager Senge interviewed was Kazuo Inamori, founder and CEO of Kyocera. According to Senge, Inamori believes that his role as a manager starts by: “...giving material comfort and spiritual wellbeing” to his employees - in other words, the hygiene factors and metamotivation.


Hard numbers

Senge's interest in these cases was not simply a romantic vision. Kyocera reached 2,000 million dollars in sales over thirty years, almost without debt. Hanover was at the bottom of the real estate industry in 1969, when O’Brian's predecessor, Jack Adam, began to rebuild it around a set of people centred values. O’Brian, following the same guidelines, has declared that the main task of a manager is: “... to bring the conditions that enable people to live enriching lives”.

This management style put Hanover in the higher quarter of the industry and made it grow 50% quicker than the rest of the industry over ten years.

Many other companies have reached similar results when their employees are metamotivated because they become - "... a group of people who are continually enhancing their ability to create their future." When this kind of behaviour arises constantly Senge speaks of a learning organisation. Too often, he says, experts are limited by their expertise. They “know” what is “right”. On the contrary, Senge is not talking about expertise here but about shared mental curiosity, the enquiring mind seeking answers.

He argues that self-mastery is related to:

• Mental models - the ability to challenge assumptions and create new models to explain events.
• Shared vision - a vision which everyone sees as their own, not one imposed from the top.
• Team learning - an exploratory form of discussion, seeking to learn from each other but more importantly to critique ideas jointly.

Cannot be fulfilled

There is a huge difference between motivation and metamotivation. Motivation deals with needs that can be fulfilled, while metamotivation deals with metaneeds that, by definition, cannot be completely fulfilled - they are ongoing. The question thus arises, "If metaneeds cannot be fulfilled, how should a manager have them into account?" The answer is by eluding certain decisions that avoid people to develop peak experiences - actions such as the common practice of intolerance with failure; the usurpation of the employees' merits by the manager, lack of recognition and so on.

The aim must be to create the organisation that allows individual members to fulfill themselves, to seek peak experience. That is if you want the sort of success that Kyocera and Hanover achieved.

Copyright © 2007 by Luis E. Bastias.
Copyright © 2007 by The Working Manager, Ltd.
All Rights Reserved