Go On, Make Me

Chapter 2 of :59 is focussed on Persuasion. It begins with an explanation of how creating an expectation of reward turns a task into a chore and demotivates rather than the former. I struggle with this somewhat in that while I think reward is often linked to a sense of entitlement (or, if you prefer, the pre-crunch Banker/Wanker effect) that can backfire when the reward isn't attained, I also think that reward is highly motivational. A few weeks ago, before The Winter's Tale, a group of my friends and I were having dinner and this very subject came up. The group that night featured three people who worked in banks, one hedge fund employee, one IT consultant, one marketeer and an unknown. Someone said that, in their view, no one worked in Finance for love, they did it for money. Three of the people disagreed but two others agreed wholeheartedly. The three who liked their jobs had a couple of things in common. First off, we all felt like we earned enough. As Goldilocks may put it, not too much, not too little, but just right. We wanted to earn more, and were motivated to work towards that. In contrast, others I know often feel they earn either too much, and are therefore trapped, or (more frequently) too little, and so it's not worth doing.

The second thing we had in common was that we had a sense of autonomy and control. We were comfortable doing our day jobs, and taking on new challenges as we saw fit. I suppose variety, or the ability to vary, really is the spice of life. For some of my friends, the journalists, consultants, lawyers, etc this tends to be lacking and they resent the manner in which they are either hostage to their jobs, or to organisational heirarchies. In the post-redundancy world, something I hear a lot about is how teams are being prevented from taking on new tasks. Even if everyone in that team is bored out of their minds and working on autopilot, and there is work to be done.

Finally, I think, is the equivalent of the nature vs nurture scenario. The people I know who love their jobs tend to be those who put a positive spin on things anyway. They are self-motivators and reward is merely a justification. In this case, the ends justify the means. Reward is probably less effective here as a result.

There were other points - the persuasive power of bad news before good. Sitting in the middle is the position of persuation. Favours make the world go round. Making a fool of yourself makes people want to help you (score!). Diffusion of responsibility as a principle. I'm a little worried that I'll end up writing a book, so I'd best stop here.