What is total motivation? Can it be improved?

Title: Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation

Authors: Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor

Reviewer: Richard Sesek (educator, wantrepreneur)

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Topic/Intent of book: This book covers organizational culture, motivation, and performance management. The book uses a research-based approach, which I very much appreciate. The topic has been covered well by Daniel Pink (in “Drive” and other works), but is satisfactorily covered here as well. They apply their interpretation (I think fairly) to the science and present it in layman terms.

I selected this book because: As an educator with an interest in creativity and innovation, I thought this book could provide some insight regarding the importance of culture on teams and how such culture might be cultivated.

Recommendation: Yes. I enjoyed this book. For educators, it is well-structured and follows a research-informed approach to motivation and culture and has some really good insights. They take these insights and translate them into an easier to digest format that works well for both academics and non-academics. Some people (i.e., those not wishing for as much of the background science), it may be less well received. However, in my very biased opinion, you should be interested in the science behind claims such as these! The social sciences are often misunderstood, sometimes comically so with claims of exaggerated importance or dismissal of meaningful concepts as “soft science.” In that regard, this book does a great service in tying the science to the application.

Major lessons from this book: Motivation lies on a spectrum from indirect to direct. The authors propose that the specific motivating factors (motivators) are important in determining performance with direct motivators having a beneficial impact and indirect motivators having a less beneficial or even negative effect on performance. The direct motivators in order of importance/impact are play (doing the work because it is fun and engaging, followed by purpose (doing the work because it matters), and finally potential (doing the work because it leads to future outcomes). The indirect motivators are emotional pressure (doing the work to avoid guilt/shame), economic pressure (financial/economic reasons), and the worst reason reason inertia (doing the work because “that’s what you do”). The suggest that maximizing direct motivators while minimizing indirect motivators leads to “total motivation” (ToMo). High ToMo leads to the best performance.

The book distinguishes between “tactical” and “adaptive” performance. Tactical performance is doing what is expected, while adaptive performance is the ability to change, innovate, and respond to the unexpected. They argue that many organizations focus on tactical performance at the expense of adaptive performance which is increasingly important, particularly for entrepreneurial ventures. The suggest that high ToMo organizations are better suited to collaboration, exploration, and subsequent innovation. They created a means by which ToMo can be measured via a simple questionnaire. Here is a

with my version of a ToMo calculator.

Total Motivation (TOMO) calculator.xlsx

Download XLSX • 13KB

There also discuss the importance of sustaining high ToMo cultures and describe the importance of both those that spark ToMo (“fire starters”) and those that sustain it (“fire watchers”) by helping maintain habits and metrics that support and inspire ToMo.

Book Inspirations: I thought that they did a great job in synthesizing a lot of the science around motivation and provide good actionable steps that can build both individual and team ToMo. I plan to take regular “time outs” to review my own motivations for things and doing a better job in aligning my actions with what really motivates me. I am already motivated to experiment, build things, and have new experiences. Moving forward, I will aim to be more reflective of these activities and which are adding the most to my personal motivation. Great book, give it a read! More importantly, experiment with the concepts and work to improve your ToMo!