Knowledge Work Incentives

Copyright Kemsley Design Ltd., 2015 1

Sandy Kemsley ● www.column2.com ● @skemsley

Changing Incentives

for Knowledge

Workers

Aligning incentives with the social

enterprise

Agenda

Knowledge work: best when it’s social

Social business #fail

Intrinsic motivation

Knowledge work incentives


How The Enterprise

Became Social

The shift in enterprise processes, attitudes and goals


Social in the Enterprise

Enterprise social work patterns

Social interaction to strengthen weak ties

Goal-oriented social production

Social feature implementations

Standalone social platforms and networks

Built into core business platforms for

“purposeful collaboration”


Human Work Is Changing


Routine Work

Execute transactions

Efficiency

Compliance/standardization

Process improvement

Automation

Knowledge Work

Solve problems

Collaboration

User-created processes

Assist human decisions

Collect supporting artifacts

Knowledge Work Works

Best When It’s Social

Social Feature Enterprise Benefits

Collaboration Exploit weak ties for knowledge

sharing and social feedback

= Improved decision-making

User-created

content

Use and capture tacit knowledge

= Improved processes

Transparency Provide context for work

= Improved problem-solving


What Makes Social

Business Social?

Social graph

User profile

List of connections

Network effects enrich community

Activity feed

Communication events between social graph

Collaboration events on artifacts

History of every process


Source: Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, “Social Business By Design”

Why We Want Social

Business

9

Source: Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, “Social Business By Design”

The Collaboration Dilemma

What is limiting the adoption of social enterprise processes?


Social Business Gone

Wrong

In spite of evidence that collaborative,

dynamic, goal-directed processes can

improve agility, profitability and

customer satisfaction, many

enterprises maintain a corporate culture

and management style that

does not incent workers

for these activities.


Social Business Adoption

Failures

Management disables social features

Attempt to control workers’ activities

Results in “off the record” collaboration

Workers ignore social features

Insufficient training

Insufficient incentives to collaborate


Executives want

collaboration across

silos; management

want work done on

time

Performance metrics

for efficiency, not

service levels


Misaligned Goals

And Metrics

The Incentives Conflict


“When an organization doles out

bonuses, raises, awards and

promotions based on individual

contributions, what’s the carrot for

social participation?”-- Gia Lyons, Jive Software

Do the right thing

What’s in it for me?

Aligning Incentives with

Goals

Changing why you work in order to change how you work


Identifying Mismatch of

Rewards and Goals

Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations

Recognition versus monetary rewards

Team versus individual goals


Source:Daniel Pink, “Drive”

Rewards vs. Motivation

Extrinsic Rewards for

Algorithmic Work

Financial

Job security

Working conditions

Focus on profit

maximization

Rewards short-term

thinking

Intrinsic Motivators

for Heuristic Work

Enjoyment of work

Genuine

achievement

Personal growth

Focus on purpose

maximization

Rewards ethical

behaviour


Elements of Motivation

Autonomy

Task, time, team and technique

Mastery

Infinitely improvable

Purpose

Contribution to the greater good


Source:Daniel Pink, “Drive”

Align Incentives with

Business Objectives

Intrinsic motivation in addition to

extrinsic rewards

Recognition for:

Problem-solving over efficiency

Valuable work outside job description

Recruiting problem solvers


Boost Teamwork

Reward team goals as well as individual

Strengthen weak ties with dynamic, self-

organizing teams

Encourage joint ownership of goals,

activities to increase buy-in

Leverage social ties/pressure to adopt

new ideas

Teamwork is not just “doing your job”


Source: Alex Pentland, “Social Physics”

Self-Organizing Teams vs

Hierarchical CrowdsourcingRed Balloon

Challenge

Time-critical search

challenge

Reward team

recruiters and

problem-solvers

The people build the

organization, then

solve the problem

Mechanical Turk

Pre-defined atomic

tasks assigned to

anonymous workers

No network

interactions

No incentive to solve

the overall problem


Source: Ted Coine and Mark Babbitt, “A World Gone Social”; Frederic Laloux, “Reinventing Organizations”

Flat Leadership For Greater

Competitiveness

Workers are more engaged

Set goals and make decisions

More productive, less absenteeism

Freedom (and will) to innovate

Reduced “management tax”

Less hierarchy = reduced costs

Less bureaucracy = improved efficiency

Zappos, W.L. Gore, Basecamp


The Metrics Of

Knowledge Work Incentives


Problem-Solving Metrics

Customer satisfaction

Time to achieve business goal (not

just complete task)

Quality of decision/goal achievement

Correlate with degree of collaboration


Enterprise Social Scoring

Social graph connectivity/strength

Indicator of collaboration

Detect/boost weak ties

Reputation-based recommendations

Social reputation

Indicator of contribution to community

Incorporate peer recognition


Building In Social Incentives

Capture social metrics on systems of interaction Social graph and interactions

Flexibility and innovation

Quality of decision/problem resolution

Peer assessment

Combine with traditional metrics

Immediate feedback with recognition and gamification


Next-Generation Social

Analytics

Evaluate (and reward) collaborative

behaviors that:

Are aligned with organizational culture

Get work done

Assist others to achieve shared goals

Resistant to “gaming” by workers


Summary


Summary

Enterprise processes are inherently

social

Misaligned goals and incentives will

reduce success of outcomes

Organizational culture and

management style may need to shift

Core social business technology is in

place, but metrics are still catching up


Questions

Sandy Kemsley

[email protected]

www.column2.com

@skemsley

www.slideshare.net/skemsley


Knowledge Work Incentives

Business

Transcript of Knowledge Work Incentives