Individual - Motivation, Decision Making, and Emotions

I really enjoyed listening to Dan Gilbert’s talk, “Why we make bad decisions.” He uses a lot of examples of poor decision making that usually happens in our daily lives. I think it is more important to learn from these poor decision making examples than learning from the principles only. The concept that I have learned from Gilbert is “errors in odds and errors in value.” When we have to choose something, we like to compare between two things and that can change the value, and sometimes the errors from underestimating or overestimating occur. People compare things with the past instead of what is possible for the present/future. People often use their own decision making based on personal experiences, and something that can threaten their future/well-being/finance might occur. All the cases and concepts that Gilbert presents are surprising me because all is true that people mostly make a decision based on their own opinion without using facts. For example, the errors in valuing, Gilbert pulls out the case that if you have $20 bill and a show ticket, which is worth $20 in your wallet, but when you arrive at the theatre you have noticed that you lost the ticket. Would you spend your remaining $20 bill on a ticket? Most people say no because people use their common sense (believable, according to Fiske and Borgida) that why should they have to pay $20 again. Put another way, if you have two $20 bills and you have lost one of them and you know when you already arrive the theatre, would you buy the ticket? – yes, because you are already there for the show. In fact, either way is same in value. This example implies that some common sense may contrast true fact. This skill is useful when you have to make every decision in your life. Overestimating or underestimating the odds and values without considering through the facts can lead to bad decision making. I do not have any outstanding questions concerning the concept since Gilbert explains his concept and the result of his experiments clearly in his talk.

Another most important concept that I have learned during this session is the guidelines for using incentives. It is good to develop a more complete view of human psychology and its implication for using financial incentives (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006, p. 129). Many managers or higher level executives often choose financial incentives for the first choice to encourage employees to put more effort into their work, or solve any problems, which often comes with disastrous results. Sometimes less is more effective, one of the guidelines that Pfeffer and Sutton suggest interests me. They give the example about one company that emphasized the concept of teamwork and team selling – helping others when they were waiting on customers, and that impressed the customers and made them stay longer and bought more products in the store (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006, p. 131). This case is similar to the phenomenon that I have seen in last spring. I went to Baltimore, MD for a food event, and stopped by Anthropologie. The store provided the area for kids for having fun with painting, drawing, and having some free cookies while they were waiting for their parents to shop. There was a staff who took care of those kids. I liked that idea though. I wonder if the Anthropologie might have the same strategy as the example that Pfeffer and Sutton recommend. If yes, it is kind of a good management idea because the staffs will have good team building, one takes care of the kids, two of them work at the cashier counters, and others work on displays and helping customers. They are not required to compare and compete with each other for increasing the sale, and they support each other to make the team achieve the goals they expect. Everybody will be happy at the end. One thing that I question is: are there any failures from using this kind of management to motivate employees since Pfeffer and Sutton show only an advantage side of this concept.

  

9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money By Ilya Pozin from Inc.com

lya Pozin is a serial entrepreneur, writer and investor. Pozin suggests 9 ways based on what he has learned from Josh, who had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. Josh has helped Pozin in developing the ability to motivate employees. Nine tips that Pozin suggests are not based on reliable data, but personal experiences and opinions from the professional and human psychological point of view. I do not see the specific sample size of this study since all nine tips are mentioned in general ways. I would like to see some evidence that strongly support all these recommendations. For example, Pozin suggests that the company should throw parties, have a company picnic, organize birthday parties, hold a happy hour, and organize events throughout the year to remind your staff that you are all in it together. I would like to see the results if these work well as the potential motivator. Some feedbacks from employees by interview, survey, and so on are going to be valuable evidence to support the arguments Pozin makes.

The topic in the second week session is going to be one of my favorite topics from this class. I really enjoyed reading the chapter that the professor assigned, and also the recordings from many professionals. All the learning materials make me have more and more sense in organizational behavior. I have found that all this week lessons are rewarding. I have learned that beside monetary incentives, other factors are more effective in a long-term human resource management. I have had some bad experience about pay-for-performance practices from my previous job, and this must not happen again in my own company (if I have it in the future), so that is why this week’s session is really interesting to me. I hope the next session will help me develop more skills in this field of studies.