WAKEshine

Stephen Robbins, in The Truth About Managing People, says that making workers happy has only a very slight correlation with making them productive.  On the other hand, creating an environment where workers can be productive makes the workers very happy.

He gives an example:

A personal experience might help you see how this works. I’ve been writing books for more than 30 years. I can honestly say that, in that period, I had only one experience with writer’s block. It was back in the early 1980s. I would sit in my office, looking out the window, waiting to "feel like writing." My waiting lasted several weeks. Then one day, I had to go in and give a class lecture on motivation. When I reviewed the evidence on the relationship between satisfaction and productivity, the answer to my writer’s block became immediately evident. The next day, I went into my office and began furiously typing anything that came into my head on the topic at hand. Most of what I wrote was garbage. But there were a few decent sentences. I threw out the garbage and began to work with the decent stuff. Lo and behold, paragraphs of quality material began to flow. And the more good stuff I generated, the more enthusiastic I became. Within half a day, my writer’s block was gone. The error I had made was assuming that productivity (writing output) would come when I felt good about writing (satisfied). What I needed was to generate some quality output, and that would lead to satisfaction.

 Truth About Managing People, The (2nd Edition) (Truth About)