When it comes to employee loyalty, there are three motivators more important than money.
That’s according to Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who’s pretty much the smartest person on the planet when it comes to employee loyalty. You might want to listen to her.
The three before money? Also M’s, according to Professor Kanter…
Membership: Create community by honoring individuality. Employees have a strong desire to feel like part of a team.
Mastery: Help people develop deep skills. Employees have a strong desire to learn new skills and feel accomplished.
Meaning: Repeat and reinforce a larger purpose. Employees have a strong desire to be striving toward some greater good.
Therefore, as you brainstorm ways to reward employees and increase motivation and employee loyalty, consider what projects, training, and team activities you could use to celebrate milestones in your company.
Interestingly, and Professor Kanter doesn’t mention this in any of her research that I’ve read, these motivators correspond nicely with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow taught us that man is a perpetually wanting creature, and he illustrated it in this pyramid.
Once one level is met, you ascend to another, and we are always striving to reach the next level.
Isn’t it interesting, then, that Professor Kanter’s three M’s each ascends a level higher into Maslow’s Hierarchy?
Money’s required for the first two levels to provide basic needs.
Membership provides for psychological belonging and love needs.
Mastery satisfies our psychological need for prestige and feelings of accomplishment.
And finally, meaning… and humankind’s search for it… satisfies the very highest order of Maslow’s hierarchy.
Dude. It’s science.
In other words, two really, really smart people – and me – are saying you need to strongly consider recalibrating how you motivate your team.
What steps will you take to do so? When? If not, why not? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Interesting…
In Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive he talks about the three motivators being…
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
Almost exactly the same (Purpose = Meaning)
I wonder if Autonomy being replaced with Membership has anything to do with the shifting pendulum from a Me Society to a We Society…
Phil,
You make an interesting connection with Daniel Pink’s work. And I would agree that they are largely aligned. However with Autonomy there’s more than a ME vs. WE focus. As you remember Autonomy is built from ability to pick one’s Team, Timing and Technique. None of those presuppose that they wouldn’t fit within a WE environment. I would say Autonomy within a WE environment means that employees won’t stick around with a firm that doesn’t match their sensibility. Especially true for the Millennial. Countless articles show greater loyalty with brands than with employers. Or willingness to move for a new job opportunity.
Remember, Dan’s point was that extrinsic values like money were falling in importance relative to the intrinsic values like Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. When Tim Miles recommends to his clients that they reward employees for good ideas, ideas that move the business forward, he’s tapping into their desire for self-determination. That’s Autonomy. FedEx days are about Autonomy.
My point is this: Dan’s model simply adds a dimension not exactly captured in the Kanter model. You might say it’s part of the esteem needs (feeling of accomplishment) in the Maslow model. You could also say that Dan misses the membership attribute captured in the Kanter model.
The best book I’ve read on the Self-Actualization is Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. While Mihaly opened the door with his research on this subject (1990), Steven Kotler is trying to cash in with his Flow Genome project (2014). For only $495 you, too, can join a series of intro webinars. Kind of seems that Kotler missed the whole point about Motivation. Or maybe his own is very, very extrinsic!
Excellent points, Anthony. Thank you for chiming in.