Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Pay fairly, then give autonomy
Why autonomy matters
Management did not come from nature. It was invented, and traditional notions of management are great if the goal is compliance. For engagement, self-direction works better.
Scientists who study motivation have built a model around intrinsic motivation, the desire to do things because they matter, are interesting, or are part of something important. It has three elements: autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives; mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters; and purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
Results only work
The Results Only Work Environment, called ROWE, was created by two American consultants and is in place at a dozen companies around North America. People have no schedules and show up when they want. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time, or any time, and meetings are optional. How they do the work, when, and where is totally up to them, as long as it gets done.
Almost across the board, productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up, and turnover goes down.
Why does traditional management favor compliance?
Frederick Winslow Taylor's 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management argued that managers should study each task, settle on one best method, and make workers follow it. The approach spread through factories in the early twentieth century because it raised output on repetitive work. Its central assumption, that managers know the best way and workers carry it out, still shapes how many offices assign schedules and tasks. Ford's moving assembly line began operating at Highland Park two years later, in 1913.
How did the Results Only Work Environment begin?
The model started as a pilot at the corporate headquarters of Best Buy around 2003. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who worked in human resources there, designed it, and they later left to run a consulting firm built around it. Under the model, employees are judged on what they deliver and not on the hours they appear to work. Ressler and Thompson described the approach in their 2008 book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It.
Why does outside pay weaken inside drive?
Psychologist Edward Deci ran a 1971 experiment in which college students worked on Soma puzzle cubes. Some students were paid a dollar per puzzle solved in one session, and others were not. When everyone was left alone in a break room afterward, the paid students spent less free time on the puzzles. Deci and Richard Ryan later built self-determination theory on findings like this, naming autonomy, competence, and relatedness as basic psychological needs.