[Springboard] LIMITS TO POWER STUDY Some sources to enrich the conversation on what is going on

[James Wiegel]

2 items to enrich the conversation:
 
www.studsterkel.org   Visit this site and you can listen in to interviews he did -- listen in on Hard Times -- interviews Studs did with survivors of the Great Depression.  Sets a context for us now.
 
Second is a description from Harvard Business Review about 4 emotional drivers of people's motivation -- matches the social process . . . seems Bacevich only touches on 2.  I have the whole article on pdf, if you want it.
 
EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION  A Powerful New Model
 
The 4 emotional drives they describe:  acquire, bond, comprehend, defend fit nicely with the social process:  
acquire = economic triangle; 
bond = cultural:  styles triangle; 
comprehend = cultural:  wisdom triangle; 
defend = political triangle.  
They do not mention the Cultural:  Symbol triangle which is what the article is all about – bringing consciousness to these drivers.
 
Description:
Motivating employees begins with recognizing that to do their best work, people must be in an environment that meets their basic emotional drives to acquire, bond, comprehend, and defend. So say Nohria and Groysberg, of Harvard Business School, and Lee, of the Center for Research on Corporate Performance. Using the results of surveys they conducted with employees at a wide range of Fortune 500 and other companies, they developed a model for how to increase workplace motivation dramatically. The authors identify the organizational levers that companies and frontline managers have at their disposal as they try to meet workers' deep needs. Reward systems that truly value good performance fulfill the drive to acquire. The drive to bond is best met by a culture that promotes collaboration and openness. Jobs that are designed to be meaningful and challenging meet the need to comprehend. Processes for performance management and resource allocation that are
 fair, trustworthy, and transparent address the drive to defend. Equipped with real-world company examples, the authors articulate how to apply these levers in productive ways. That application should not be selective, they argue, because a holistic approach gets you more than a piecemeal one. By using all four levers simultaneously, and thereby tackling all four drives, organizations can improve motivation levels by leaps and bounds. For example, a company that falls in the 50th percentile on employee motivation improves only to the 56th by boosting performance on one drive, but way up to the 88th percentile by doing better on all four drives. That's a powerful gain in competitive advantage that any business would relish. 
 

Jim Wiegel

A laugh is composed of 'a series of short vowel-like notes (syllables) each about 75 milliseconds long, that are repeated at regular intervals about 210 milliseconds apart'. from The Kingdom of Infinite Space.

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