Andrew Herrington
Pateo Consulting
www.pateo.com
email:x  pateo.com
UK - Mobile - 077 36717312 / Canada: (519) 635-5308

This article connects Maslow's well known explanation of human actions to the changes that are going on in society at present to make an argument for the way that knowledge workers can best be managed in the interests of achieving the best results for the business. The article provides a background of understanding for developing the tools for leading and motivating Knowledge Workers.
Central is the simple argument that to do what you do well you must be enjoying what you do. Competitive businesses need their employees to be doing what they are doing well in order to prosper in the competitive marketplace.
Maslow's theory describes what people need to be doing to enjoy themselves.
Other material included describes research into knowledge workers attitudes - attitudes that are determined by the developmental status of society. It can be argued that as society has progressed with economic development individuals have climbed Maslow's hierarchy. The latest change ("The Knowledge Worker Revolution") is simply a further progression that is the inevitable result of economic development.

Maslow and the Knowledge Worker Revolution

One of the best known theories explaining the actions of people is that of Dr. Abraham Maslow ("Motivation and Personality", New York, Harper and Row, 1954).

Dr. Maslow hypothesized that people are motivated by a hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy he described may be drawn as follows:

Each individuals needs must be satisfied at the lower levels before they progress to the higher, more complex levels.
When low-level needs are satisfied, individuals are no longer motivated by them.
As each level of needs is met, individual's progress to higher level motivators.
All the needs are always present.

It can be reasonably hypothesized (See Sidebar: "Why Knowledge Workers are Self-Actualizing") that Knowledge Workers must be looking for motivation from the highest levels of the triangle - Self-Actualisation.

Maslow described the characteristics of the Self-Actualized Person as follows:

Are realistically oriented
Accept other people for what they are
Are spontaneous in thinking, emotions, and behavior
Are problem-centered rather than self-centered
Need privacy
Are autonomous, independent, and able to remain true to themselves in the face of rejection or unpopularity
Have a continuous freshness of appreciation
Have mystic or oceanic experiences although not necessarily religious
Identify with mankind
Have deep meaningful relationships with a few people
Have a democratic structure and judge people as individuals
Have highly developed ethics
Resist total conformity to culture

These characteristics, coupled with the motivational needs described by Maslow (outlined in diagram above), provide some tools for understanding how to motivate Knowledge Workers.

Most Knowledge Workers have no need to worry about their physiological, security, and safety needs, so these basic, low-level needs no longer motivate their actions, although the needs are always present. Many people are today motivated primarily by social, esteem, and self-actualizing needs.
Everyone needs to be loved, to be accepted, and to belong. Individuals join social, religious, fraternal, and educational organizations to fulfill this psychological need.
Esteem needs are a step higher in Maslow's hierarchy. In addition to being merely accepted and belonging, people want to be heard, to be appreciated, and to be wanted. People want to feel important and need status.
At the highest level are self-actualizing needs. People seek to achieve their highest potential through professional, philanthropic, political, educational, and artistic channels. These needs, according to Maslow's concept, become important only when all social and ego needs have been satisfied.

In a team, particularly one with a wide age range, it is likely that individuals needs will be at various levels on the motivational ladder. Those team members at the highest levels - probably a majority - will probably be motivated by a wider variety of needs than those people at lower stages. Additionally the wide ethnic diversity present in the Knowledge Worker population will increase the variability of factors that will motivate team members. These three factors leads to the increasing need for people to be treated highly individually if they are to be well motivated. At the same time a highly functioning team can satisfy many of the lower level needs on the hierarchy, which further strengthens the team by making it a fun, supportive and attractive place to be part.

All these factors can add synergistically so that a top quality team, 'on a roll', becomes almost unbeatable. Teams operating at this high performance level represent the peak in human efficiency, creativity and innovation. Hence the creation of business environments designed to engender and support such teams is increasingly a major objective for businesses that want to remain competitive.

Elsewhere on this website I refer to "The Knowledge Worker" revolution. This revolution has two major components:

(i) The shift of creative power in a business from the few senior people to the many individuals that create unique knowledge within the business, under the leadership and motivation of the senior people.
(ii) the change in attitude of employees as their education level has increased and their security has increased over the last 50 years.

The material below is intended to support the hypothesis that Knowledge Workers are self-actualizing. A review of it shows that many of the characteristics of the self-actualizing individual - as identified by Maslow - are strengthening in the population as a whole and that those parts of the population from which 'Knowledge Workers' are drawn are showing these characteristics strongly.

The following is paraphrased/quoted from the 1999 UK government report "Drivers of Change - 5 key drivers (that) will shape the world over the next decades". (Successor document available at this link (click 'no' if a script error box appears).) See also: A paper presented by Ron Inglehart at Global Trends 2005: "A Future Trends Conference" organized by The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Professor Inglehart is at the University of Michigan where he leads the "World Values Survey" a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It has carried out representative national surveys of the basic values and beliefs of publics in more than 60 societies on all six inhabited continents, containing almost 80 percent of the world's population. Its first wave was carried out in 1981, a second wave was completed in 1990-1991, a third wave was carried out in 1995-1996 and a fourth wave is taking place in 1999-2003. This investigation has produced evidence of gradual but pervasive changes in what people want out of life, and the basic direction of these changes is, to some extent, predictable.

"Why Knowledge Workers are Self-Actualizing"

"Postmodern" or "postmaterialist" values are now becoming prevalent in developed countries; these are gradually replacing some of the "modern" and "materialist" values that developed with industrialisation.

Political Scientist Ron Inglehart has used the World Values surveys of 43 societies (representing 70% of the world population) to trace the shift from modern-materialist to postmodern-postmaterialist values. In 1970 he found that in western Europe postmaterialist values were predominant only among under-25s. The majority of people in all other age groups had modern values and overall modernists outnumbered postmodernists by around 4 to 1. By 1994 this ratio had fallen to less that 1.5 to 1 - postmaterialists had become almost as numerous as materialists. A similar shift has occurred in the US where more than half of the population now express support for postmaterialist values.

Almost all this shift in values can be explained by generational change. There has been only a small shift towards postmaterialist values within age cohorts. Instead, since the post-war generation came of age every cohort has been more supportive of postmodern values than its predecessors.
The most important drivers of this shift in values have been economic growth and political security. Since 1945 advanced industrial societies have attained much higher levels of affluence than ever before. Together with the emergence of the welfare state and a long period of peace this has brought about a historically unprecedented situation - most of the population does not live under conditions of hunger and economic insecurity. Freedom from worries about economic security has allowed people's needs for self-expression and for non-material well being to become more prominent.

Inglehart has found a high correlation between wealth and education and postmodern values and it is probable that the recent expansion of higher education in many advanced industrial countries is helping to drive the increase in postmodern values. Data on young peoples' attitudes suggests postmodern values are likely to become ever more predominant over the next decades as more modernist generations die out.

"Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."
Studs Terkel in "Working"

© Copyright 1999-2004 Andrew Herrington Pateo Consulting

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© Copyright 1999-2004 Andrew Herrington Pateo Consulting