This is Nick Nichols again for the Technology Marketing Center, continuing our exploration of the critical factors in increasing innovative performance.
We're going to dive right into the most important, yet vexing, question about technological innovation: how do we motivate technical professionals in undertaking challenging tasks that involve great uncertainty and risk? More later on the complex dynamic relationship of these two factors of technology innovation. But first, some background.
Over many years there has been much research and study on what motivates people. This has resulted in models and theories, many psychological, that generally are aimed at answering three questions: what needs motivate human behavior; how are these behaviors focused on productive ends; and how are they sustained if good. or changed if bad. Enduring psychological models, such as Maslow's and Herzberg's, have led to greater understanding about job satisfaction and influenced management practice to establish higher levels of motivation and achievement.
For technical professionals in R&D settings the consistent finding in studies and surveys is that the top motivator is the technical task challenge. Thus, the composition and characterization of "the task" becomes the important determinant for motivation. A useful framework for thinking about challenging task design and work motivation can be found in the book "Work Redesign", by Hackman and Oldham (Addison-Wesley, 1980). It defines five dimensions of task design:
1) SKILL VARIETY - the degree to which the task requires use of different skills, abilities, and talents, both in a professional and organizational context.
2) TASK IDENTITY - the degree to which the individual feels a part of the whole project or effort, from start to finish.
3) TASK SIGNIFICANCE - the degree to which the work is considered to be important by the organization and has positive impact on the lives of others.
4) AUTONOMY - the degree to which the task provides personal discretion and freedom to carry out the work.
5) FEEDBACK - the degree to which the individual is provided timely, clear, and direct information on how the work is being performed and factors affecting its progress.
Taken together, establishing these dimensions at the outset becomes a "task charter" for the technical professional and an essential part of effectively deploying individual capabilities to challenging innovative tasks. It is also a critical role element for the manager, since focusing early on these characteristics sets the climate for future motivated behavior and task accomplishment. So it becomes a key facet of leadership and management of the human side of innovation at all levels of the organization. And other functions will be affected. Training will have to cover more cross functional elements for a broader audience to enhance skill variety. Better staff communications will be required to sustain connection of the technical workforce with the significance and priority of the task within a whole innovative effort. Clear and timely feedback will become an even more important part of the leader's job, not altogether a comfortable role for the technical manager. And autonomy will contribute in a major way to motivation for task achievement; this is tricky since others at the executive level have the strategic autonomy that establishes the objectives for the overall effort, but the scope of operational autonomy (how to achieve the strategic objectives) is a key motivator.
Furthermore,these task dimensions have to be established in an evolving work environment. The expectations of new technical hires are different than for more experienced workers. In many research organizations there may be a number of generations of technically trained professionals that will expect different degrees of task skill variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback. And there is a new generation graduating from research universities that use "learn by doing" approaches that put students into customer-facing situations to develop technological solutions for addressing social needs. There is some anecdotal evidence that there are gender differences in expectations for task conduct: women value task significance and have a greater need for connections with ultimate worth of the overall effort; men seem more interested in skill variety and autonomy in the process of task conduct.
So good task design that motivates innovative behaviors is a moving target. Technical managers and their organizations have to be sensitive to the needs driving motivation and the dimensions of the tasks that fulfill these needs on an ongoing basis. As mentioned earlier, risk and uncertainty are latent in technological innovation and greatly complicate establishing stable organizational environments that continually nurture and sustain high levels of motivation for challenging innovative work. More about these factors in our next blog.
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