James Krohe Jr.

Richard S. Wellins, Paul Bernthal, and Mark Phelps of Development Dimensions International wrote in a 2005 article, “for the past two decades we have been trying to realize the benefits of empowerment, teamwork, recognition, people development, performance management, and new leadership styles.“

If you want to know why efforts to engage the workforce have failed so dismally, look again at that list. It contains not a word about work itself. Industrial psychologists have long understood that few workers are motivated to excel by pizza parties, bonuses, lunches with the boss, employee-of-the-month awards, or even the promise of annual raises. What does motivate workers is work: interesting work, useful work, work that challenges them, work whose completion satisfies both ego and the social self.

Unfortunately, the focus of conventional management, from hiring to evaluation to compensation to status, is on jobs, not work. The two are not the same, and it’s time we began shifting focus from the former to the latter.

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