Primed to Perform Summary

What really motivates you to work? Understanding this is the first step to building a company where employees thrive and succeed.

1. Understanding Motivation Through Play, Purpose, and Potential

Motivation operates on three dimensions: play, purpose, and potential. People are most driven when their work feels engaging and plays into their curiosity and learning. This "play" dimension makes tasks themselves enjoyable and enhances performance. Purpose ties into valuing the results of one’s work, such as a nurse who takes pride in helping patients, even if the day-to-day is tough. Finally, potential is about seeing the work as a pathway to a bigger, personal goal – like a paralegal gaining skills for law school.

Recognizing these components helps employers align tasks with motivations. High performance stems from connecting employees' day-to-day work to an overarching sense of enjoyment, value, or future achievement. Intrinsically motivated people, especially those driven by play, outperform others over time.

Studies show play as the strongest driver. For instance, when participants were encouraged to imagine their tasks as fun experiments rather than mundane duties, their output became significantly more creative.

Examples

• A marketer enjoying the creativity in designing ads sees their work as play.
• A teacher inspired by the purpose of shaping future generations stays motivated despite challenges.
• A student working a part-time job views it as a step toward achieving their career goal (potential).

2. Beware of Emotional and Economic Pressures

Not all motivations are beneficial. Emotional pressures like guilt or fear, economic incentives, and inertia (habitual behavior) are indirect and saps productivity. People often work to avoid disappointing others, to secure bonuses, or simply because it's what they’ve always done. These pressures result in disengaged, uninspired workforces.

For example, workers logging overtime solely for bonuses can end up resenting their jobs. Similarly, someone in a high-status role might stick with it despite hating the work, purely for the ego boost. Inertia is particularly harmful as it leaves people unsure why they’re even working, leading to burnout over time.

These motivators not only reduce output but also drain job satisfaction. Leaders should minimize reliance on them by creating workplaces that prioritize meaningful connections to play, purpose, and potential instead.

Examples

• A manager who guilts employees into staying late damages morale.
• Bonuses tied to performance targets increase anxiety without improving engagement.
• A long-time employee unsure of their purpose feels stuck due to inertia.

3. Balancing Tactical and Adaptive Performance

Performance actually has two key aspects: accomplishing measurable goals (tactical) and responding to unexpected change creatively (adaptive). While most companies excel at tactical goals like hitting sales targets, adaptive performance requires flexibility to tackle new challenges and expand into new markets.

Building adaptive performance involves fostering problem-solving and creativity, which in turn rely on play, purpose, and potential. For instance, studies show that teams engaged through enjoyable and meaningful work consistently produce more innovative ideas than those working out of obligation.

Organizations must integrate adaptive goals alongside tactical ones. Overemphasis on tactical tasks creates rigidity, while adaptability ensures sustained long-term success.

Examples

• A marketing team that creatively pivots its campaign amid changing trends demonstrates adaptive performance.
• A tech company entering an emerging market quickly shows the value of adaptability.
• Research revealed participants primed with playful motivation generated 30% more innovative ideas.

4. Total Motivation (ToMo) as a Cultural Tool

ToMo is a numerical measure of organizational motivation. It uses six key motivators (play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, inertia) to evaluate how aligned a workplace is with motivating its employees directly.

Teams with high ToMo have employees doing meaningful work they enjoy, reducing reliance on toxic motivators like fear or habit. Measuring ToMo involves employee surveys about their motivations. Low ToMo scores signal room for improvement, especially in areas requiring creativity or direct customer interaction.

ToMo isn’t just theoretical – it impacts financial results. Companies with higher ToMo scores outperform competitors in sales, customer retention, and employee satisfaction.

Examples

• A salesperson with high ToMo outperformed one with low ToMo by 28%.
• Frequent customer complaints can signal low ToMo among frontline employees.
• High ToMo workplaces like Google foster renowned employee engagement.

5. Leadership Shapes Employee Motivation

Leaders play a significant role in driving play, purpose, and potential. A positive leadership style boosts ToMo by fostering collaboration and curiosity and helping employees connect tasks to shared values or personal goals.

For example, a manager encouraging experimentation and learning creates play-driven employees. Similarly, framing work with a higher purpose – such as a company’s role in preserving the environment – sparks motivation. Leaders should also personalize goals to make employees feel valued and reduce unnecessary pressures.

Adaptability starts at the managerial level. Leaders can reframe tactical objectives into open-ended adaptive ones, improving both morale and outcomes.

Examples

• Inspiring leaders emphasize personal growth and hands-on coaching for their teams.
• A retail chain synonymous with sustainability aligns employee purpose with environmental impact.
• Adaptive goals in a study led to business growth in one group compared to a loss in another.

6. Job Design Drives Motivation

The design of a role is as important as the employee performing it. Roles should allow employees to see the broader impacts of their work, relate to the larger process, and prioritize tasks independently. Without this, workers may disengage or feel undervalued.

For instance, Toyota rotates tasks in their factory so employees understand the full car-building process, promoting a sense of purpose and collaboration. Whole Foods provides workers with opportunities to interact with customers and suppliers, inspiring new ideas and genuine involvement.

When empowered to manage priorities, employees feel ownership over their work. Creativity thrives when decision-making authority is distributed.

Examples

• Toyota employees spot inefficiencies through rotational job exposure.
• Grocery clerks at Whole Foods suggest changes based on customer conversations.
• Independent task prioritization helps employees pursue experimentation confidently.

7. Unity Through Common Identity

Organizations thrive when employees share a common purpose, a clear behavioral code, and a heritage they can take pride in. Cultures built on these principles foster teamwork and transform jobs into callings.

A behavioral code focuses on how decisions are made rather than vague values. For instance, a company might state whether customer experience always outweighs meeting a sales target. Celebrating the company’s heritage through real stories reinforces shared values and pride.

Strong, shared objectives coupled with clear, fair career ladders ensure engagement. Competitive, winner-takes-all setups undermine motivation and creativity.

Examples

• Patagonia employees share a passion for environmental conservation.
• Celebrating historic milestones during company meetings boosts morale.
• Employees, identified as aligned with service values, drive customer satisfaction.

8. Avoid Reward-Punishment Systems

Direct monetary rewards or punishments often backfire. They lead to unintended consequences and fail to motivate employees meaningfully. In fact, such systems can encourage gaming the system or cutting corners.

Historical examples show how such schemes fail. In 19th-century Delhi, bounty offers to kill cobras only led to an increase in cobra farms, harming the intended outcome. Similarly, employees nudged by monetary rewards might sacrifice quality or skip creative solutions.

Replacing this with ToMo-driven engagement ensures genuine alignment with organizational goals.

Examples

• Bonus-driven sales teams risk putting short-term profits over long-term customer satisfaction.
• Reward systems prioritizing quantity harm product quality.
• The “cobra bounty” story represents the risks of poorly thought-out incentive mechanics.

9. Custom Career Advancements Over Crown Jewels

Traditional promotion ladders often prioritize tactical performers or competitions among employees, sidelining creativity and team spirit. Individualized career paths, by contrast, cater to employees’ strengths and interests.

Some might advance through leadership, others through technical expertise, and others through customer-focused roles. These paths reduce competition and stimulate innovative thinking.

Recognizing and rewarding employees for problem-solving and collaboration over just deliverables ensures workplaces remain adaptive and healthy.

Examples

• LinkedIn offers dual tracks for experts and managers to progress without requiring a managerial role.
• Creative thinkers thrive in consultative roles designed for collaboration.
• Recognition for customer satisfaction improves Whole Foods employee engagement.

Takeaways

1. Regularly evaluate your organization’s culture and track employee motivations using tools like ToMo.
2. Rethink traditional promotion structures to acknowledge varied strengths and motivations among hires.
3. Foster an inspiring work environment by designing roles that align with play, purpose, and potential.