Mastery and acknowledgment of continual improvement of performance is what leads to a growing level of job satisfaction over time.
While job satisfaction is the inward manifestation of an employees' mastery and recognition of continually improving and excelling at their work, motivation is the most outward manifestation of how an employee perceives the value of their work and contributions. As the article states, motivation includes the factors of how an employee chooses to use their time, their intensity of effort, and the persistence level that work is completed at. These are all outward manifestation of someone's job satisfaction, and often are predictors of how much ownership and mastery they feel over their jobs. What makes managing very difficult as a profession is the fact that the underlying motivators of what gets each employee to a level of performance on these factors...
As the article states, one cannot simply offer more money, because for some employees time off, recognition, additional responsibilities, or the opportunity to redefine their job all are more motivating to them. Individuality wins and there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" approach to motivating employees. Each requires a separate and specific strategy as defined by the manager to create as much opportunity to excel and attain both ownership and mastery of their jobs as possible. It is the truly great organizations of the world including IBM, GE, Google, Toyota and others that have been able to create unique company cultures that nurture motivation and job satisfaction. As a result, these companies have far greater levels of performance, both from a financial and market-based standpoint directly as a result of how job satisfaction and motivation are managed.
