The Task-Quotient

Conducting business today that provides products faster, better and cheaper is critical to an organization's growth and even to its survival. Doing more with less, through organizational efficiency, has become a visible mantra over the past century. Raising individual and group performance and satisfaction can provide advantages from a mere survival tool to one that is a substantial competitive edge. Current global conditions have flattened organizations with fewer managers who are expected to manage more people, and with individual contributors who are expected to produce more in less time and reduced resources. "Products can be copied. Technology and training can be duplicated. No one, however, can match highly charged, motivated people who care" (Pasternack & Viscio, 1998, p. 63). Today's workforce is working harder and more hours with diminishing support structures. In addition to the increased expectations, there is a continuous discussion and encouragement to improve work-life balance. "There is a motivation crisis in American industry, and the symptoms are all around us: low productivity, quality problems, poor customer service, costly accidents, high absenteeism, increased violence in the workplace, and declining morale, to name but a few" (Spitzer 1995, p. 3). New and innovative tools are needed to help us work smarter, not just harder. The need to significantly improve work-life balance and at the same time improve productivity should be of paramount concern.

Have you ever been presented with a situation, at home or at work, with a request to perform a task in which you said to yourself, "I just don't feel like doing that right now"? If so, your internal rhythm that tries to regulate the task types that intrinsically motivate you (tasks that you engage in for enjoyment value, not for external rewards) may be trying to tell you something. "We believe that intrinsic motivation must be present if people are to do their best" (Kouzes & Posner, 1995, p. 40). Based on staffs I have managed over the past 20 years, I found that most of the staff members knew what they liked to do in general, but had little ability to understand the importance of task balance and rebalance to raise or maintain their motivation. This research identified a formula that allows individuals to understand and influence/regulate their TQ, so that they could maintain the highest level of individual intrinsically motivated satisfaction at work. "Intrinsic motivation, or engaging in a task for its enjoyment value, is one of the most powerful forms of motivation" (Deci & Ryan, 1987, p 1024). Human beings are motivated intrinsically and extrinsically, yet intrinsic motivation provides a deeper sustainable condition than extrinsic motivation.

The TQ assessment tool allows people to continuously monitor and change their working environment to optimize what motivates them. Creating and maintaining sustainable effective and efficient organizations continues to define an organization's level of success in today's world economy. According to a large-scale national survey of American workers, "The first and perhaps the most important complaint concerns the lack of variety and challenge" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p.161). Identifying a supported method to define optimal job task type mixtures is the objective.