In May, I had the chance to catch a talk by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. Mackey was speaking at C2-MTL, a local conference in Montreal that merges creativity and commerce that has previously attracted guests like Richard Branson and Francis Ford Coppola. Mackey talked about why Whole Foods, the largest natural foods store in America, has adopted radical new approaches to human resource management.
The retail chain has impressively been listed on Fortune’s 100 places to work for the last 15 years in a row! (1). It is also often used as “benchmark for HR strategy by the academic and business world” (2).
Mackey’s talk gave me an excellent starting point to glean insights into how successful organizations manage people, into what matters to workers today and into the more fundamental question of why we work.
Whole People
Whole Foods, whose motto is “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”, tries to practice a philosophy called conscious capitalism in which “the interests of three different groups of stakeholders in a company are balanced: shareholders, customers, and employees” (3) and aligned to a “shared fate” (4). The company goes to great lengths to “contribute to the happiness and welfare of its employees” (5).
In terms of compensation, Whole Foods pays its employees almost twice the national minimum wage, as well as offering gainsharing, stock options, performance bonuses and experience-adjusted base pay. Whole Foods leadership justifies these higher salaries “reduce turnover and make Whole Foods a much better company”. (6). It also considers that “executive salary pay caps of 19x the average employee’s salary” are a part of their corporate culture (7). As a comparison, Bloomberg notes that S&P 500 CEOs today make “204 times that of regular workers on average” (8).
In addition, Whole Foods boasts “excellent benefits, open-door policies, team autonomy, diversity, career training” (9), as well as paid time off, compressed workweeks, health insurance, gay-friendly policies, and a diverse workforce. (10)
Beyond money
A staunch libertarian, it is said that Mackey’s “management style — part hippy, part shrewd businessman — has been key to the firm’s success” (11).
In 2007, CEO John Mackey stopped drawing a salary from the company. He justifies his decision as such (12):
I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart.
While obviously the result of continued financial success of his company, Mackey’s decision in many ways echoes the larger sentiment of Whole Food’s HR policies in regard to its employees: that other factors motivate humans beyond money.
The Cash to Happiness Correlation
As Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggests, “money acts as a scorecard, but it does not get people up-and-at ’em for the daily work nor does it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfillment”. (13)
While money is a key driver in the decision to work initially, it is not linearly correlated to happiness at work. Research suggests that “once you clear certain income thresholds, the cash-to-happiness correlation levels off”. (14). Time Magazine cites a 2010 Princeton study by economist Angus Deaton and Nobel laureate for Economics Daniel Kahneman that pegs that threshold at $75,000 (15), while a separate 2012 Time article citing research from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion suggests that threshold may even be lower at $50,000 (16).
In the long term, according to the research, workers earning above this threshold felt “deeper satisfaction about how their life was going” and those earning below were on average more inclined to feel stress or sadness, focus on the past problems or worry about retirement. (17).
There is even research that shows that lottery winners are actually no happier than their counterparts. (18)
Mild Engagement
While workers earning above a certain threshold would seem to be on average happier about their lives, there remains an uneasy feeling that many or even most workers are only mildly engaged with their work. For many, work is mainly a way to pay the bills.
A 2011 Gallup study on engagement in the workplace cites alarming results. Only about 30% of workers were engaged with their work (defined as “involved in and enthusiastic about their work and contributing to their organizations in a positive manner”), while a staggering 50% were not engaged and 20% were actively disengaged! (19)
A particularly concerning insight in the study is that highly educated employees were among the least likely to be engaged, which could indicate that the lack of engagement may not only be concentrated in lower-pay jobs below a given threshold.
The Ambivalence of Work
In a humorous NY Times opinion piece (20), the author illustrates this feeling:
But there’s an underlying ambivalence: we celebrate Labor Day by not working, the Book of Genesis says work is punishment for Adam’s sin, and many of us count the days to the next vacation and see a contented retirement as the only reason for working.
The article goes on to note that: “We’re ambivalent about work because in our capitalist system it means work-for-pay (wage-labor), not for its own sake”. In other words, capitalism may have associated work to the production of an economically useful output, rather than a productive process where the works feels empowered to control his destiny.
Philosophers have long been divided on the issue of the virtue of work. On one hand, Bertrand Russell posited that ”a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work. The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work” (21). In other words, work is a necessary evil. Aristotle suggested a similar view, in that “we work to have leisure, on which happiness depends” (22). As a contrast, Voltaire posited in Candide that “a life of leisure is at best boring”.
I generally find it hard to believe that leisure is a remedy to soothe the “pain” of work. In my book, work can be equally satisfying as leisure, understanding that both are required to achieve a balanced life.
New Models of Work
New models of work have emerged in the last years to make work actually “work better” for humans.
I highly suggest reading Rework, a bestselling book published by web development firm 37 Signals that challenges many of the classic assumptions about work (especially work in startups) with often counterintuitive wisdom. Section titles include: “Good enough is fine”, “ASAP is poison” and “Meetings are toxic”.
Many other alternative work models have been proposed, from Mackey’s sustainable Conscious Capitalism to Tim Ferriss’ outsourcing-driven The Four Hour Work Week.
Some have proposed rethinking the work week. The team at Particletree wrote a great article called the The 4 ½ Day Workweek that had a profound impact on my thinking a few years ago.
Others have proposed rethinking the work day itself, by adapting to a new reality the 8-hour work day, a non-scientific legacy construct proposed by 19th century social reformer and cooperator Robert Owen (“Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest”) that would first be implemented at scale by Ford in the 1910s. One recent idea has even suggested to adapt the work periods to our ultradian rhythm, understanding that human minds can only focus on any given tasks for 90–120 minutes. (23)
The increasing proliferation of freelance, half-time and remote work arrangements are also a testament to our desire to find new ways to organize our work.
Intrinsic Motivators
However, to create work experiences that are truly tailored to what workers want, it is essential to understand what motivates people.
In his C2-MTL allocution, Mackey referred to the work of bestselling author Daniel Pink.
Pink gave an awesome TED talk on human motivation, notably arguing how “traditional rewards don’t work”. He suggests that current incentive schemes including classic compensations methods like salary, benefits and retirement plan may not be sufficient to properly motivate workers. Pink suggests that deeper, more powerful forces are at work.
Pink hypothesizes that people are motivated by 3 main factors:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
Relatedly, HBS Prof Kanter suggests a similar list of core motivators responsible for worker engagement (24):
- Mastery
- Membership
- Meaning
Let’s take a closer look at a few of the recurring items on these lists of powerful intrinsic motivators.
1. Meaning: The Happiest People Have the Hardest Jobs
Meaning/purpose happens when people get the feeling that their work makes sense and matters in a larger context, whether in their communities or in the world at large. Meaning has the power to make a regular task deeply satisfying (25):
Whether reversing schools’ struggles, making unsafe water potable, or helping the terminally ill, workers who feel a deep sense of meaning face the seemingly worst of the world with a conviction that they can do something about it and serve others.”
Two days before John Mackey took the stage at C2-MTL, I also had the privilege of hearing TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie talk about what drove him to quit his job and start a company that would sell shoes on a on a 1:1 basis. To date, TOMS has given away 10 million pairs of shoes to children in over 60 countries. Obviously, Mycoskie’s s personal entrepreneurial path has been fueled by a deep feeling of purpose and a sense that he was doing good in the world. But, as interestingly, Mycoksie recounted in the early days of TOMS how purpose was actually a very powerful way to recruit, engage and create loyalty with the numerous interns who helped him start the company. For them, like him, the idea of doing something that mattered in the world got them out of bed daily and fired them up to contribute to this game-changing project.
Positive psychology would suggest that “emotionally fulfilling work is a key to enduring happiness, as opposed to the fleeting nature of pleasure”. (26). Also, while pleasure might be immediately enjoyable, fulfillment through meaningful work can however be long to achieve and full of setbacks:
Talking about the corps members of City Year who are working with at-risk students, Kanter mentions that “Progress isn’t linear — it may only be apparent after many long days, like when a D student raises his hand” (27).
As Kanter notes, the happiest people often have the hardest jobs.
2. Mastery: Making Yourself Vulnerable
In his book Outliers, author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell described his 10,000 rule which put forth that a person needed 10,000 hours of experience to gain mastery of a specific discipline, like music or chess. Mastery here was defined as a level of proficiency similar to a professional. Indepently of natural aptitude, anyone could simply practice enough to become a master. (Note: Time Magazine, BBC and Wired later published articles, some based on scientific research, that seemed to disprove the myth that deliberate practice necessarily led to superior performances).
On a more down-to-earth level, mastery at work is the perception that we are improving every day in our chosen discipline. The idea that we are developing our skills and improving on some path can be very satisfying. Few things feel more hugely rewarding than breaking through to some higher level of proficiency in a discipline that we are seeking to improve at or master.
In order to break through to these higher levels of performance, we will almost inevitably need to put our very best work out there for larger audiences to consider/judge. Thus, mastery may very interestingly also imply facing fears and making ourselves vulnerable (27):
It seems that the more our work is exposed to the world, the more motivated we are to do it well — which resonates with the point that doing awesome work means making yourself vulnerable.”
As workers, we can derive a great sense of motivation by knowing that our work is seen or used by others around us (which can number in the hundreds to the millions depending on the context). This can drive us to do our best work. In that way, there is a connection between meaning and mastery.
Mastery also often entails an acute and escalating risk of loss. Olympic athletes train thousands of hours, plan out their training schedules annually and conform to strict diets in the hope of mastering their discipline. These daily efforts lead them to compete in ever more challenging competitions. Positive outcomes lead to breaking through to higher levels, while a split second loss at the finish line can be a painful or even devastating setback. Great musicians, artists, writers, architects and chefs can devote countless hours to mastering their art, only to see their work negatively reviewed in one fell swoop by a critic or by the public. That said, the only way to improve is to put yourself on the line, to be vulnerable.
While meaning may be linked to having an impact in a larger context, mastery seems to be a slightly more personal pursuit — albeit a deeply satisfying one as well.
3. Membership: We Are Social Creatures
As a friend once told me, “we are social creatures”. A big part of our identity and self-worth is created through our relationships with others around us (28):
Relationships create psychological space and safety so that we can explore and learn. When we feel safe and supported, we don’t have to narrow in on survival tasks like responding to danger or finding our next meal. We are able to explore our world, which builds resources for times of stress and adversity.”
Loafing theory suggests that “people stop slacking when they work with people they like and respect” (29). Relationships matter: “Social bonds become productivity bandwidth. Once again, we see that connections create value”.
Specifically, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology mention that the following factors have a particular strong influence on motivation: “evaluation potential, expectations of co-worker performance, task meaningfulness, and culture” (30).
Countless management articles have been written about the importance of team culture in achieving a mission. Management leader and author Peter Drucker coined the best saying I’ve ever heard about culture:
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
To his credit, Drucker, a legendary strategy guru, understood the limitations of his discipline. He was aware that “no matter how far reaching a vision or how brilliant a strategy, neither would be realized if not supported by the culture” (31)
Come to think of it, I now remember where I first heard this quote from. It was fittingly at C2-MTL directly from John Mackey of Whole Foods!
Meaning, mastery and membership are a powerful cocktail. Together, I think they go a long way to demystify the intriguing science of motivation and to help to explain why we work.
Photo: Cover, Dictionnary.