Staff motivation has become the ultimate entrepreneur’s puzzle

Centum Investment CEO James Mworia. The company more than doubled its bonus payouts to staff to Sh1 billion in the year ended March. PHOTO | FILE 

By CANUTE WASWA

In Summary

• To understand intrinsic motivation, you must first know a person’s worldview. This has a significant influence on what you think is important - and by implication - what motivates you.

It all started with a story in the Business Daily that investment firm Centum had more than doubled the bonus payouts for its 90 staff to Sh1 billion in the year ended March, making it one of the largest bonus allotments in corporate Kenya. This translated into an average entitlement of Sh11.1 million per employee.

The company’s bonus scheme, payable in three equal instalments over three years, had accrued to Sh431.3 million from the previous year.

Centum said in its newly released annual report that the 142.6 per cent jump in bonus payment is attributable to the outperformance of pre-set annual benchmarks.

“The bonus is high because of the performance,” said Centum CEO James Mworia in an interview. Welcome to the world of employee motivation.

The term motivation is derived from the Latin word movere, meaning “to move.”

Human motivation is broadly defined as the forces acting on or within a person that results in voluntary engagement in specific activities. Therefore, the motivation theory is concerned with understanding why and how human behaviour is engaged.

Yet, despite the enormous amount of research over the past 100 years, there is no single theory of motivation that is universally accepted.

The best way to explain this motivation puzzle will be in the form of a historical account. Microsoft Encarta was started back in the mid 1990s.

Microsoft paid professionals to design and write an online encyclopedia. Project management practices were implemented to sure it was done on time and done in compliance with all the specifications from the leadership team.

Of course Bill Gates was the richest man in the world. So Encarta essentially said “Let’s do this by the rules,” and reinforced specific behaviour by financially rewarding timeliness and quantity of output. Microsoft then bundled and sold this software as a CD.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, was the stark contrast.

It was started in 2001, using thousands of mostly anonymous online volunteers to build an encyclopaedia. But instead of selling the encyclopaedia, Wikipedia made it freely available to the public on the World Wide Web. Instead of rewarding writers with financial incentives, Wikipedia’s only reward was the sense of community.

Wikipedia rewarded its online volunteers by uniting them in a common purpose and giving special public recognition for those who “went the extra mile” with their contributions. Instead of doing it “by the rules,” Wikipedia said, “Let’s do this for fun.”

Encarta only published about 62,000 articles in six languages, despite an eight year head start on Wikipedia. Eventually Microsoft conceded defeat and shut down Encarta in 2009.

Meanwhile, nine years later, Wikipedia is succeeding beyond the wildest expectations. It is one of the most-visited websites in the world, with 78 million monthly visitors, over 17 million articles, and is available in more than 270 languages.

Wikipedia continues to grow with thousands of daily additions in hundreds of languages. And they have continued their culture.

What was the difference that made the difference? It is something that Daniel Pink calls intrinsic motivation.

To understand intrinsic motivation, you must first know a person’s worldview. This has a significant influence on what you think is important – and by implication what motivates you.

Next week we will not only unpack intrinsic motivation, but I will also tell you why extrinsic motivators like Centum’s are limited and can even backfire.

Mr Waswa is a management and HR specialist and managing director of Outdoors Africa. E-mail: waswa@outdoorsafrica.co.ke