What motivates man?
One or more of these:
Passion
Fear
Incentive
Over the last year I produced two short films in the time I was unemployed and living off the grid. This immediately followed my four years at an American investment bank which perhaps epitomises most people's concept of a capitalist institution. Going from that world driven by unashamed monetary incentivisation as blatant as a carrot on a stick, the world of independent film makers working on a no-budget project (note: that does not mean porn!) taught me a few things about human nature. Today as I am working within a small, again independent, self supported team of volunteers trying to make a dent in the debate over education reform, my observations on factors of motivations continue.
The charity sector is significantly reliant on unpaid, volunteered services of people who simply care about a cause. The same people in their bread-and-butter jobs are contrastingly driven by what they get paid. in my two short films I was mesmerised when working with teams of 30 odd people, each of whom were complete strangers, to see that they actually turned up for each of the 3 days of shooting at different locations around the Greater London area; all for the opportunity to meet other like minded people, grow their list of experienced and with the hope to be part of the next big thing. Unfortunately, I didn't produce the next big thing so it was just another notch in their belt and they moved on to the next project to work on, receiving nothing more than food and drink for the days on set which by my own admission is not an incentive by anyone's food quality standards.
In parallel, they go on to their waitressing jobs or computer programming desk and haggle over their pay, holidays, benefits for each and every last penny. It's not also the case that these 30 odd people simply turned up as most do for their daily work routines. They gave a shit. There was passion, creativity and a general unarguable sense that we were working towards the same cause united only by the fact that we all wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be. In other words and in every employer's ideal, each worked to the best of their ability and worked as if they owned the set.
Incentive is the most common tool deployed to motivate and is a reminder for many of us for why we wake up every weekday morning. Even if it is not money itself, it is perhaps what money can acquire for us that motivates and so inevitably acquiring more money is the objective. Often where passion and incentive collide, it can lead to reduced wealth as we trade off incentive for the ability to follow our passion and that ability to follow our own path compensates for the lack of or reduced monetary compensation.
The most successful people conversely are an example of where the pursuit of passion generates wealth. I seriously doubt those who top the Forbes Rich List despise the start of each day for work related reasons. Undoubtedly many of them reached where they are today purely in the pursuit of profit - the incentive motivation to get rich or die trying.
The benefit of passion over incentive as a motivation is also a point of administration. Lack of meritocracy or inaccurate assessment of skill, effort, etc can destroy the chase for the carrot and leave behind a group of disgruntled employees. The classic case of perception vs. productivity kicks in - a game so many of face timers know well. As long as the boss thinks we are working, all is well.
Fear, I will argue, in fact the most efficient method of motivation and one that undoubtedly leads to the desired result fastest. The eerily perfect running of the Chinese Olympics is a recent example. A simple example we can all empathise with is the one of a student desperately cramming the night before an exam to avoid the consequences of not achieving a certain grade. Perhaps also why fear is so effective is because, of the three factors, it is the most primaeval feeling driven by our instinct to survive. Understandably, the unpleasantness associated with this and the coercive methods to achieve it clearly undermine its use.
Passion is self administering and a cheaper solution. Most importantly, the results are arguably superior to those delivered by either incentivisation or fear.
Passion has no ceiling in terms of targeting achievement. Fear targets the outlined goal in the prescribed way with no room for creativity or individual contribution. Incentivisation has a glass ceiling to the limit where there can be no more marginal increment in incentive due to greater output. In light of this, it astonishes me why every business, institution or government doesn't operate along the principle of inspiring passion amongst its citizens. The first step towards this would be to acknowledge it.
I think it is quite timely that my recently acquired hero, PM Cameron is championing research to monitor the happiness of Britons and the quality of life at a time where so many feel despair and are struggling. Unfortunately inspiring passion isn't as easy as writing a cheque so motivation is more often driven by a suboptimal factor that can boost but not sustain our satisfaction or happiness. The good thing however is that Passion is contagious. Your worst subject at school becomes less dreadful when you have a cool teacher who cares about the subject and shows you why its interesting which often enough leads to better results. The limitation in spreading the passion factor is that most of us are in situations we don't care for, subordinate to seniors who suffer the same. At the other end, this is perhaps why we harbour some envy for entrepreneurs who appear to do what they like and seem to have a lot of fun being successful.
Sure, you may argue that if we each did want we wanted, who would do what nobody wants but everybody needs? And even then I'm pretty certain that there would be takers for driving the city garbage trucks. There will of course also be the flip scenario with over subscribed posts and even if we all would rather like to have Jeremy Clarkson's job and get paid to blow stuff up, there is only so much stuff in the world to blow up! This selection process would however be automatically smoothened out to avoid such excesses as passion is not the sole determinant in selection. Many of us have multiple interests and the selection is realistically subject to living standards and ability.
I commend Cameron for attempting to implement his Big Society talk into action. It won't be easy as we trudge our way through daily strife but hopefully, if he holds on to his passion, it will eventually trickle down and at some point, each of us will feel that domino fall.
One or more of these:
Passion
Fear
Incentive
Over the last year I produced two short films in the time I was unemployed and living off the grid. This immediately followed my four years at an American investment bank which perhaps epitomises most people's concept of a capitalist institution. Going from that world driven by unashamed monetary incentivisation as blatant as a carrot on a stick, the world of independent film makers working on a no-budget project (note: that does not mean porn!) taught me a few things about human nature. Today as I am working within a small, again independent, self supported team of volunteers trying to make a dent in the debate over education reform, my observations on factors of motivations continue.
The charity sector is significantly reliant on unpaid, volunteered services of people who simply care about a cause. The same people in their bread-and-butter jobs are contrastingly driven by what they get paid. in my two short films I was mesmerised when working with teams of 30 odd people, each of whom were complete strangers, to see that they actually turned up for each of the 3 days of shooting at different locations around the Greater London area; all for the opportunity to meet other like minded people, grow their list of experienced and with the hope to be part of the next big thing. Unfortunately, I didn't produce the next big thing so it was just another notch in their belt and they moved on to the next project to work on, receiving nothing more than food and drink for the days on set which by my own admission is not an incentive by anyone's food quality standards.
In parallel, they go on to their waitressing jobs or computer programming desk and haggle over their pay, holidays, benefits for each and every last penny. It's not also the case that these 30 odd people simply turned up as most do for their daily work routines. They gave a shit. There was passion, creativity and a general unarguable sense that we were working towards the same cause united only by the fact that we all wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be. In other words and in every employer's ideal, each worked to the best of their ability and worked as if they owned the set.
Incentive is the most common tool deployed to motivate and is a reminder for many of us for why we wake up every weekday morning. Even if it is not money itself, it is perhaps what money can acquire for us that motivates and so inevitably acquiring more money is the objective. Often where passion and incentive collide, it can lead to reduced wealth as we trade off incentive for the ability to follow our passion and that ability to follow our own path compensates for the lack of or reduced monetary compensation.
The most successful people conversely are an example of where the pursuit of passion generates wealth. I seriously doubt those who top the Forbes Rich List despise the start of each day for work related reasons. Undoubtedly many of them reached where they are today purely in the pursuit of profit - the incentive motivation to get rich or die trying.
The benefit of passion over incentive as a motivation is also a point of administration. Lack of meritocracy or inaccurate assessment of skill, effort, etc can destroy the chase for the carrot and leave behind a group of disgruntled employees. The classic case of perception vs. productivity kicks in - a game so many of face timers know well. As long as the boss thinks we are working, all is well.
Fear, I will argue, in fact the most efficient method of motivation and one that undoubtedly leads to the desired result fastest. The eerily perfect running of the Chinese Olympics is a recent example. A simple example we can all empathise with is the one of a student desperately cramming the night before an exam to avoid the consequences of not achieving a certain grade. Perhaps also why fear is so effective is because, of the three factors, it is the most primaeval feeling driven by our instinct to survive. Understandably, the unpleasantness associated with this and the coercive methods to achieve it clearly undermine its use.
Passion is self administering and a cheaper solution. Most importantly, the results are arguably superior to those delivered by either incentivisation or fear.
Passion has no ceiling in terms of targeting achievement. Fear targets the outlined goal in the prescribed way with no room for creativity or individual contribution. Incentivisation has a glass ceiling to the limit where there can be no more marginal increment in incentive due to greater output. In light of this, it astonishes me why every business, institution or government doesn't operate along the principle of inspiring passion amongst its citizens. The first step towards this would be to acknowledge it.
I think it is quite timely that my recently acquired hero, PM Cameron is championing research to monitor the happiness of Britons and the quality of life at a time where so many feel despair and are struggling. Unfortunately inspiring passion isn't as easy as writing a cheque so motivation is more often driven by a suboptimal factor that can boost but not sustain our satisfaction or happiness. The good thing however is that Passion is contagious. Your worst subject at school becomes less dreadful when you have a cool teacher who cares about the subject and shows you why its interesting which often enough leads to better results. The limitation in spreading the passion factor is that most of us are in situations we don't care for, subordinate to seniors who suffer the same. At the other end, this is perhaps why we harbour some envy for entrepreneurs who appear to do what they like and seem to have a lot of fun being successful.
Sure, you may argue that if we each did want we wanted, who would do what nobody wants but everybody needs? And even then I'm pretty certain that there would be takers for driving the city garbage trucks. There will of course also be the flip scenario with over subscribed posts and even if we all would rather like to have Jeremy Clarkson's job and get paid to blow stuff up, there is only so much stuff in the world to blow up! This selection process would however be automatically smoothened out to avoid such excesses as passion is not the sole determinant in selection. Many of us have multiple interests and the selection is realistically subject to living standards and ability.
I commend Cameron for attempting to implement his Big Society talk into action. It won't be easy as we trudge our way through daily strife but hopefully, if he holds on to his passion, it will eventually trickle down and at some point, each of us will feel that domino fall.
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