Is Money the Demotivator

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post this week about money and motivation.   Psychological experiments say that money is not the best instrument to use to motivate behavior and that it actually demotivated people because it devalued their "internal drive".  Hmm.  If you want to motivate behavior offer meaning, not money.  

We have spent years weighing the value of green building.  Is it more expensive?  Hundreds of studies proving one way or the other.  It is if you do this, it is not if you do this.  But if you look at the early adapting people that built green, they were all motivated by something other than money.   The collaborative process of green building demands conversation and healthy conflict to resolve monetary decisions and how they impact the building process and product.  Woven into this is the LEED process and the "buying of points" that can occur.  But the drive for green building originated out of meaning, not money.  Now it seems that money is becoming less of a barrier for green building and the delta between building green and non green has shrunk.

For me personally, I decided long ago that I have only one thing in my life and that is time.  If you boil it down to the least common denominator, that is what I have to give.  So, I work with that thought and make decisions based on trading my precious commodity, time.  I go to work every day knowing that I trade my hours that day for money and then in turn I trade that money for food, gas, housing, clothes, Reese's Pieces and Ruffles.  I think about who I am with and what I am doing with my time and make sure that I am making a good trade.  So, working in this context, I am pretty particular about how I trade.  

If you take this philosophy and apply it to building or whatever you want to apply it to, you will find it creates a puzzle that demands solving.  Going back to the study of motivation, Edward Deci, a psychologist, studied students who were solving puzzles for him.  He offered half of the group monetary rewards for solving puzzles and the others continued to solve puzzles for fun.   The group that was offered a financial reward were less interested in solving puzzles on their own time than the group that was doing it for fun.  The external rewards were actually demotivating a group.  I found this fascinating at first but then totally understandable.

Maybe that is the same trigger that comes into play when someone offers me a cheaper solution to a problem thinking that money is the driver in the decision?   I don't think that green can be the only driver in a decision either.  I think you have to think and weigh out the reasons for your decision.  However, having said that, decisions I see being made on green furniture are pretty simplistic.   Is it Green Guard or not.  Is it Cradle to Cradle or not.  Is it the same price or is one less expensive.

I watched several presentations recently by different manufacturers.  They were amazingly similar in that they all said the same buzz words.  Our product is cradle to cradle.  Our product is filled with recycled content and is recyclable.  Our product has been designed using green materials.  It appears that the price of admission has changed and it is no longer unique to have a green product.   So coming full circle, if you are trading dollars for furniture, what is the motivator?