Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Any economics 101 student or 1980′s middle manager can tell you about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Simple put, theres a stack of stuck of stuff, and unless you have the items in the stack below you, you’re unlikely to be happy. It’s a way of modelling ways of motivating people. Giving me a pair of shoes and a sandwich will not motivate me, but will motivate the hungry man with no shoes.

It’s fallen out of favour over the last few years, like many Taylorist management techniques, but I think it’s almost more valid now that ever, it’s just you need to look at it with fresh eyes, and I think many companies would benefit from thinking about it again.

So lets crack in. Lowest on the pyramid of needs are the “physiological needs Excretion, Eating, Sex, Drinking, Sleeping and Warmth.  Highly mobile companies inturupt virtually all of these.  You still do them, but not well, and probably don’t see the benefits.  Eating, sex and sleep seem to be those that are most affected.

You don’t tend to cook for yourself when you’re on the move a lot.  You live of take away, hotel food and sandwiches.  I have a friend is virtually lives on sandwiches alone.  He has a BLT for breakfast, another sandwich at his desk, and then one in the evening on his way “home” (eg. the hotel).  Sandwiches are ok, but they’re not exactly healthy fod most of the time, and the lack of repetition

Sex seems ike a humourous subject, but if you work away from home Monday to Friday, the seeing and seeing to of your other half needs to be planned.  Planning sex is not sexy.   The is of course the option of not being in a relationship and findign comfort where required, but that too has knock on effects.

Finally there’s sleep.  Getting enbough sleep is one thing, and if you go to bed with your head still buzzing with thoughts about the working day and the day to come, your sleep will not be good sleep.  You won’t wake rested, you’ll frequently wake early because you’re worrying about something, you might even dream about work.  I’ve woken up talking about the answers to that days problem.  I’ve stared at the ceiling for 8 hour worring about the best ways to deploy code, and organise shreadsheet data, and tell somebody they are crap and I’m moving them to another team.  This is not good sleep, and very far from restful.

So there you go.  I’ve not even moved upto the second level of the pyramid, and already big sprawling companies seem to have under mined the foundations of motivation.  Much higher up in the pyramid are things like Growth and Self Improvment and things which companies and HR departments pride themselves on having initatives and policies about, but maybe they need to think a little further down the pyramid.  If you’re going to ask people to work super hard, they need to be super motivated, and to do that they need to sleep in the same bed, eat well and get laid regularly.  They need time to do all the stuff in life which makes it livable, like washing and tax returns, car insurance and bonfire night.  They need time for themselves over and above just saturday night.

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