Company Culture Can Drive Employee Motivation

In the 1980’s Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, psychologists from the University of Rochester, distinguished the six main reasons why people work: play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia.

In a recent book authors Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, after surveying thousands of employees around the world, have built on this research with some interesting conclusions, the most interesting being that...

“Why we work determines how well we work, and only a few “whys” drive great performance.”

Of the six reasons for working, many researchers have found that the first three motives tend to increase performance, while the latter three hurt it.  And further that the companies that have a high performing culture in the first three reasons excel in their industries. 

The Three Reasons That Increase Performance:

1.     Play…employees are motivated by the work itself because they enjoy it.

2.     Purpose…when the direct outcome of the work fits your identity, you work because you value the impact

3.     Potential…when the outcome benefits your identity, and enhances your potential for advancement.

In researching for the, “Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures through the Science of Total Motivation,” they found that a high-performing culture maximizes the play, purpose, and potential felt by its people, and minimizes the emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. They termed this as creating total motivation (ToMo). 

The book shows formulas for how to measure total motivation, how total motivation drives customer satisfaction, what organizational processes affect culture and how employee motivation is effected by these processes.  In summary, they point out that cultures that inspired more play, purpose, and potential, and less emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia, produced better customer outcomes.

There is no “silver bullet” when building a culture that effects employee motivation, and they are not easy to build.  But it is why high performing cultures are such a powerful competitive advantage. Considering the success of these companies that ranked the highest in their industries based on ToMo, it would be hard to argue against the premise and we might want to focus more on the  “why” we work instead of the processes that drive it.  

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