Name: Yang Choy, Yessica
Class: ORGB3201
Instructor: Prof. John Griffith
Reference: “The 8th Tuesday. We talk about money” – Tuesdays with Morrie

“Working with a purpose and setting the right value”

What do you want? What do you need? Can you distinguish the differences between wants and needs? When you are asked to classify an item under any of these categories, most of the people can distinguish it, but how many of these people would actually apply this when they are seeking for something? The human brain is a very complex organ, it allows us to think, feel, move, sense, hear, taste and smell. The vast amount of today’s information, we are always busy receiving, processing, analyzing and storing the information retrieved; gradually we started to forget our meaning of doing so; we started to lose the intention in doing something, the reason to work, to study and even the purpose of life. As Morrie addressed on the 8th Tuesday: “It’s all part of the same problem. We put our values in the wrong things.” It seems very straight forward what Morrie said, the problem is that human now a day mistakenly put the wrong value in something or undervalued things that should worth more. In general, every human being in a certain stage or maybe in our entire live valued a piece of smooth rectangular greenish paper the most, no matter what we are doing, this piece of paper somehow link with our purpose, reason or meaning that we gives to our actions. Money isn’t everything, but without money we are nothing. Is this true? We study hard to earn a diploma, which will lead us to find a good job that will then generate a good salary and then what? In “Tuesdays with Morrie” he mentioned that now people have been brainwashed “Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good…” This becomes a huge issue specially when the world economy is in a downturn, people are even more concern of what they hold, how can they retain it. Employees are the most valuable assets in an organization, they are the one who perform the business operation and keep it running. Successful managers are aware of this, so they are very concern how the employees feel and perform at the workplace. One of the biggest concerns in organizational behavior is employee’s motivation, because one’s motivation is what push people moving forward, is what people give meaning/reason in performing in a certain way to attain a certain goal. Motivation is somehow linked to many other topics and concerns at the workplace most but not least employee’s values, mood, performance, productivity, efficiency and more. If employees are not motivated properly they will not attain the goal. In a recent study 55% of the employee are not enthusiastic, if they are not positive about what they are doing, do you think they will perform at their maximum capacity? If for an employee their motivator is money, to what extent a company can set their wage or salary to keep employee satisfy? For instance, to increase or maintain motivation of employee is very hard, because each employee have a different motivator because each one of them valued things and situation at a different extent. Even at the end when turnover happens, this might not be the fault of the managers or employers, employees might be responsible for it. As mentioned earlier, human are putting value in the wrong thing, we messed what are our needs and wants, we think of “money” as our ultimate goal in life; money have fogged what our real purpose and meaning in living, working and studying. Employees who work for compensation and benefits could be very enthusiastic in the short run, but in a long run they will notice that money can’t buy everything, they will start questioning their motivation, their goal and so their enthusiasm will fade away; going to work will become a routine punishment because of dissatisfaction. Therefore, human should set the fact that we are working for money and start to think about the real purpose at the workplace and life. Human are social, we interacts with others, we tried to get others attention, love, time, care, affection; this is what human ultimate goal of living. Money can’t buy this, but somehow we think that we can that’s why many people who put money as their priority end up dissatisfied, suffering and having a miserable life. At the end we just fall into a dead end where we start pursuing money thinking that we can buy anything we want, so we work hard to get more and more of it; with what we hold we think we can get other attention, make other envy us, falsely think that we are getting “love” from others so we get others to fight to keep what we have or even gain more. At some point when we realize that all this is just a mistake, it doesn’t lead us to what we want, then we end up getting tired of what we are doing. What is the solution for it? What can employees do to stay satisfied and motivated at work? As Morrie mentioned in the 8th Tuesday: “Do the kind of things that come from your heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.” Therefore, the solution to keep us motivated at work, be satisfied with what we have, what we get and what we do is to choose a right motivator, set the right value that really worth it, specially to not involve money in anything we do because money does not mean everything. Finally, if we successfully do so, we will always be satisfied with anything we do and be motivated all the time. We will not end as Ted Turner in “Tuesdays with Morrie”, a billionaire that only cares about money, as he failed to buy a network, he think that it such a big deal in his life that even on the day he die, he will engrave that on the tomb. Human’s life consist of more valuable thing than just money, stop focusing at money and goods and set your sight further, view it in a different way, things might result differently.