Why We Work – September 1, 2015

Why We Work (TED Books) Hardcover – September 1, 2015
Author: Barry Schwartz ID: 1476784868

Review

“Barry Schwartz has long been one of the most astute — and compassionate — observers of American life. In Why We Work, he makes a compelling case for building organizations that run with the grain of human nature rather than against it. If you want to make work more meaningful, for yourself or for your team, you need to read this wise and powerful book.” (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive)

“In a masterful book that delivers a deep understanding why we work, Schwartz makes a convincing case that getting the answer wrong bears profound costs for employees and managers in any organization. A highly recommended, thought-provoking read.” (Amy Wrsesniewski, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale University)

“A meaningful look at why we’ve lost meaning at work, and where we can find it.” (Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take)

“A delightful, accessible book that glides across centuries of business and industry to reveal the underpinning moral foundations of how and why we work. If you have a job, or hope to have one, read Why We Work” (Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google and author of Work Rules!)

“Invoking plenty of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and even a bit of Bruce Springsteen, Schwartz’s inspiring manifesto forces us to question the very nature of modern-day work… Via fascinating anecdote and plenty of data, the book forcefully claims that how we work isn’t working.” (HuffPost Books)

“A concise 90-page treatise on work that should be required reading for every boss and manager.” (Chicago Tribune)

About the Author

Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and the author of Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice, and Practical Wisdom. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parade Magazine, USA TODAY, Advertising Age, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, Harvard Business Review, and The Guardian, and he has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Anderson Cooper 360, and CBS Sunday Morning.

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Series: TED BooksHardcover: 112 pagesPublisher: Simon & Schuster/ TED (September 1, 2015)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 1476784868ISBN-13: 978-1476784861 Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7 inches Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #9,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #5 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Occupational & Organizational #12 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Occupational & Organizational #32 in Books > Business & Money > Human Resources > Human Resources & Personnel Management
I was looking forward to reading this book. As an entrepreneur, I am interested in work because I do a lot of it. I have worked in many jobs over the decades of my life. At 16, my first job was sweeping and mopping floors at Roeder’s Jewelry. I also helped customers create their own tropical fish aquariums and taught them how to care for the fish. I worked on a Ford assembly line at their Sheldon Road plant and later the Michigan Truck Plant. I have cleaned offices, worked behind the counter of jobs, have had many jobs involving computer networks including my own companies, and managing projects for others as free-lance talent. I have also worked for companies as a manger of hundreds of employees who reported to several managers who reported to me. I have some idea of why and how people work.

Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology and I don’t know his work background other than psychology and academia, but I know this book was a labor of love and represents a great deal of sincerity and serious thinking over several decades. So, I want to be sympathetic to what he says. I really do. And I do think he is right to urge people to seek work that enriches their life, not just their bank account. He is also good to urge employers to do all they can to create humane and positive workplaces with jobs that enable people to function and grow as people and not just as meat based machinery.

But I think the author has a far too simple a view of the relationship people have to work.
I recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve their management or to make their own career more fulfilling. It makes a critical correction to the widely accepted, and flawed, view of worker motivation. When trying to explain why the book was powerful to a friend, a fatty-foods analogy (really) generated an “aha!” from her. So I’ll use that explanation hoping it wasn’t the wine she was drinking that made my analogy work.

Remember partially hydrogenated oils? Several generations considered them a positive human invention. By the 1990’s, however, scientists had shown that their manufacturing produced trans fats that damaged our hearts and killed tens of thousands of people a year. The FDA finally banned them this year. A century after we started using them and two decades after we knew they were killing us, we finally rid ourselves of this poison.

Human progress is replete with damaging forays, like partially hydrogenated oils, that we eventually expose as such and, at the slow tempo of societal progress, reverse our way out of them.

Today we are deep into a destructive foray regarding our conception of worker motivation. We created an idea two centuries ago that people hate work and do it only for money and other extrinsic rewards. This human invention (which is what an idea is) is not a widespread food ingredient but a ubiquitous workplace element. It doesn’t cause heart attacks (directly, anyway), but it does cause heartache, disgruntlement, disengagement and low productivity. As a result, if your workplace is like most, four out of five of your workers would rather not be working today. The science is in: It’s not human nature to hate work and treating workers as if they do causes damage to them and to business.
Why do we work? Swarthmore College psychology professor Barry Schwartz explores that question in the TED book Why We Work. Mostly he wants to object to the notion that we work for material rewards alone. Put more precisely, he wants to change the fact that most people’s primary motivation for work is material rewards.

I have frequently heard people say, "Find something you love, dedicate yourself to it, and don’t worry about getting paid." Which is fine for some people, if they love something that actually pays. Love running? There are a few jobs out there, in retail, training, or publishing related to running. But people in those jobs are a tiny minority of people who love running. Love to sculpt? Good luck making money with that. Love playing video games? Dream on. So I was encouraged to see him acknowledge that "Ninety percent of adults spend have their waking lives doing things they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be."

This does not have to be a bad thing, though. It’s not the jobs themselves that have to change. The marketplace creates a demand for the jobs performed, after all, or those jobs wouldn’t exist. He wants to change the way the jobs are structured. "Just how important material incentives are to people will depend on how the human workplace is structured. And if we structure it in keeping with the false idea that people work only for pay, we’ll create workplaces that make this false idea true."

Management science and workplace habits have put us in a "deep hole" of "misconceptions about human motivation and human nature." Schwartz wants to "foster workplaces in which challenge, engagement, meaning, and satisfaction are possible.
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