A couple of weekends ago I completed a sprint triathlon at Blenheim Palace and was sitting on a train contemplating a conversation I just had with my mum.

Mum: So how was it?
Me: I loved it!!!
Mum: Oh no…

My mum was not just disappointed that I had enjoyed myself, which means that next time I’ll be attempting an Olympic standard rather than a sprint triathlon, she is seriously worried about me and with good reason. Having recovered from my long-term illness, I have experienced a bit of a setback after taking on that challenge. My immune system is down, I still feel exhausted three weeks later and I clearly need rest rather than chase the next challenge.

The thing, I love a challenge. Back on the train I was chatting to a fellow triathlete, and I asked her: “Why do you do it?" 

She did not hesitate a moment before saying this:

I love challenging myself, I love the training routine, it makes me feel healthy and fit beyond my age. It’s a strange question: challenges simply make me feel alive and happy. 

I could not have put it better myself. It seems competitiveness and thirst for challenges are part of my DNA. As the British mountain climber George Mallory famously said: the reason he wanted to climb mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, is because it was there. 

But we are not all wired in the same way. For some, life is a running track and it’s their raison d’être to set goals, compete, aim high and never question the sanity of their pursuits. Those who continuously challenge themselves - be it running an ultra marathon, signing up for a Tough Mudder, agreeing to do their first public speech or cooking an enormous family Christmas dinner - instinctively reach beyond their comfort zone for the prize of fulfilment. 

For others, life is not about being a warrior. Their fulfilment may come in ability to express yourself creatively or in caring for others and having a network of warm and long-standing relationships. Still, others seek acceptance and popularity. 

We aren’t all the same, and it does not help to measure other people with your own yardstick. To build successful relationships at home and at work, it pays to recognise differences and find a way to attune to and understand other people. 

Last week I wrote about motivation. If you manage a challenge junkie at work, it really isn’t about the money or the perks, the nice office or continuous approval. Challenge, variety and complex tasks are the best motivators for someone like me. 

In personal life, it is even more important to understand the values those close to us hold dear. If your wife gets up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday to go for a run, does two rounds of laundry, fixes lunch and writes a blog article about her marathon training before you wake up, she is not crazy, she just cannot bear to have it any other way. She does not need you to join her running club, but your empathy and support would probably mean the world to her. 

                                                                                               ***

My grandfather died just a few days before his 75th birthday from a heart attack, as he was breaking ice with a heavy cast iron pole to access his garage. Previously, he had a few strokes and should have known better than to undertake something so strenuous. This year he would have turned 90. Since my own illness (which has only one cure - proper rest), I’ve been thinking a lot about him and what was driving him that morning. He knew, of course, that he would have been better off sitting on a sofa, waiting for spring to come and melt the ice naturally, but sitting still was alien to him. 

What if we could attune to ourselves, see if it’s possible to re-wire a few things, so that challenge junkies don’t regard life as a racing track and learn, gradually, to be kinder to themselves?

I would really like to hear what you think - please leave a comment below. 

If you employ a team of people or are currently puzzling over performance incentives, this article may offer some food for thought... 

I’ve just come across a survey, comparing what employees want and what employers think they want.

Here is what employees said, starting with what’s most important to them:

1. Full appreciation for work done
2. Feeling “in” on things
3. Sympathetic help on personal problems
4. Job security
5. Good wages
6. Interesting work
7. Promotion/growth opportunities
8. Personal loyalty to workers
9. Good working conditions
10. Tactful discipline

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

Now take a look at what managers think employees want, starting with the highest value:

1. Good wages
2. Job security
3. Promotion/growth opportunities
4. Good working conditions
5. Interesting work
6. Personal loyalty to workers
7. Tactful discipline
8. Full appreciation for work done
9. Sympathetic help with personal problems
10. Feeling “in” on things

The discrepancy in findings is shocking, isn’t it? What’s even more astonishing is that the survey came out in 1946(!) in Foreman Facts from the Labor Relations Institute of New York and was produced again by Lawrence Lindahl in Personnel magazine in 1949.

These studies have been replicated with similar results by Ken Kovach in 1980, Valerie Wilson, Achievers International in 1988, Bob Nelson, Blanchard Training & Development in 1991, Sheryl and Don Grimme, GHR Training Solutions in 1997-2001.

The survey reveals a decided lack of empathy on the part of managers, especially in relation to intangible rewards, such as appreciation, 'being in the loop’ and personal sympathy. Good wages are not what’s motivating performance.

What about incentive pay? Bonuses, share and option schemes and earn-outs are popular and prevalent mechanisms among young and established companies to motivate their top talent. As an economist, I fully approve of incentivising executive roles with performance-related pay, designed to align the interests of managers with those of the company’s shareholders. It, therefore, came as a surprise to come across a Ted talk by career analyst Dan Pink, who questioned whether performance incentives work in creative industries.

Pink talked about the so-called candle problem, created in 1945 by a psychologist Karl Duncker.

In his experiment Duncker gave people a candle, some pins and a box of matches and asked to fix a candle to a cork board wall, so that it does not drip to the table below. In this classic experiment participants usually try to fix a candle to a wall with a pin (which does not work), melt the wax and then fix the candle (does not work either), before finally realising that a box holding matches can be fixed to a wall with a pin and a candle can be put inside so it does not drip.

What’s interesting is that later on Sam Glucksberg, a scientist at Princeton University, repeated the experiment with two groups. In one group participants were offered a monetary reward, if they can solve the problem quicker than an average participant. No reward was offered to another group. Participants, offered a dangling carrot, arrived at the solution on average 3 1/2 minutes later, than those, who weren’t given a monetary incentive.

How about that?

It turns out that rewards work really well for tasks with a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow focus and concentrate the mind, which is why they work in so many cases. If the goal is clear, zoom in and go for it.

However, with creative tasks a clear incentive to come up with a new television format or to invent a new product, a ‘carrot’ does the opposite: it dulls thinking and dampens creativity. There is no clear solution to creating something new or innovative. Instead of focussing, a creative executive must look around, imagine broad possibilities, think ‘outside the box’.

Having worked in television, it is surprisingly enlightening to consider performance incentives traditionally put in place by production companies in a different light, inspired by Pink’s Ted talk. Pink argues that intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery and purpose are the real drivers of performance in creative fields.

It makes sense, especially in the context of entrepreneurs, who are autonomously motivated to get their ideas to succeed. Such conclusion is not, however, straightforward for a senior executive planning new hires or working on a new incentive plan. You can’t very well welcome a new executive with a contract, promising “a sense of purpose”, upon joining your company. Still, it’s apparent that effective compensation in creative fields must rely less on bonuses and earn-outs and instead deliver creative freedom, autonomy and permission to take risks via a comfortable flat salary and non-financial perks. 

Do you work in creative industry? What do you think about my conclusions? Jot your thoughts below. 

One of the best novels I’ve read this year is Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It’s about a feisty girl Ifemelu and an ambitious boy Obinze who fall in love as teenagers in Nigeria but then are separated as Ifemelu leaves for the United States. Ifemelu is smart and well-educated, she speaks fluent English, having been reading English literature since childhood. At an American university she is regarded as something exotic, treated as a cliché and is having to re-invent herself to fit in. 

She cannot possibly complain of heat because “she is from Africa” or expect people to know where Nigeria is on a map. When she returns home to Lagos, Ifemelu finds herself distant from friends she used to be on the same wavelength with, as they now have different values, are obsessed with status, material possessions, dress differently and do not really understand her.

I suppose the reason I liked the novel so much is because it rang true to me. I even recognised myself, having similarly moved from Russia to Britain and having had to adjust to the new environment. I still get scolded for complaining about the cold: “But you are Russian!”, and I had to teach myself to be patient as I explain the whereabouts of Ekaterinburg, the third largest city in Russia. 

In his book How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton quotes Proust:

"In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”

de Botton argues that “it is the only way in which art can properly affect rather than simply distract us from life.”

The experiences of fictional characters give us permission to re-define what’s “normal”.  Recognising yourself or your own anxieties in a character from a XIX century novel is a way to appreciate that what you are going through isn’t just your own trial but something previously endured and accepted by the rest of the humankind. 

Reading fiction can also help us be more sensitive to our own feelings and feelings of others. A novel may sometimes put a finger on something we’ve felt but have not quite formulated in our minds. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid expresses how a Pakistani student felt about Princeton, when he first arrived on campus: “Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible.” I must have felt the same way during my first week in Oxford but I’ve never been able to put it quite so succinctly.

To quote Proust again:

“If we read the new masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it those reflections of ours that we despised, joys and sorrows which we had repressed, a whole world of feeling we had scorned and whose value the book in which we discover them suddenly teaches us."  

Have you been recently affected by a novel? Leave a comment below