Five Levels of Motivation and Operation

 
    5. Serve an ideal
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      |  4. Cultivate a climate of growth
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          |  3. Develop people
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              |  2. Make great products
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                  |   1. Reap profits    

1. The ultimate objective of a company is to make a profit. I once worked for the Insurance Company of North America, whose company slogan was, "All that you desire can come only from profits." I joked that they misspelled "prophets." The purpose of the slogon was obviously to keep us focused on the bottom-line.

The same sentiment was once voiced by Andrew Carnegie, when he was giving a guest lecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. Pointing out the window at his steel mills, he asked the students, "Do you know what those plants produce?" Everyone answered, "Steel," but Carnegie said, "No. They make money."

2. But we know that keeping your eye on the bottom-line doesn't ensure that the bottom-line rises. If it were so, a business could be run by accountants. A company has to spend money to make money. It has to take risks to be rewarded. It has to have a direction that people can follow. It has to have something to sell that buyers want. So more forward-looking managers focus on the quality of their products, in the knowledge that a better product or service, with equally good marketing and management, will produce better profits.

3. There is another approach, a "higher-level" approach, that requires even more insight and produces even better results. That is to focus on developing a creative, responsible, honest, hard-working staff, who will naturally create great products because that's the kind of people they are.

How does an organization assemble a great staff of people? A commitment to a high quality product helps, for that attracts those who care about quality. But there must also be a commitment to training, for the intelligent employee is attracted and retained by mental challenge and advancement, i.e. by learning something. The commitment to the employees' continued development is returned by their commitment to their company. To gain commitment, you must show commitment. If you reward innovation, you will get more innovation. If you remove fear and anxiety from the workplace, creativity will emerge.

4. There are organizations that mete out training and development opportunities like rewards, and there are other organizations where training and development are in the "atmosphere" of the place, where it is so pervasive and built-in to the culture that learning takes place all the time, naturally and autonomously. Such a corporate climate attracts really great people, who naturally produce really great products, which naturally attract great numbers of buyers. When an organization reaches this level, its reputation carries it high from recuitment to sales. It attracts employees, stockholders and buyers alike, the way a firestorm makes its own wind to feed its flames.

5. Very few companies surpass the fourth level to reach the highest step: serving an ideal. The word "ideal" is mocked by most business-people, as if it were the opposite of "real." It is not. The ideal is the ultimate goal which the organization serves. It may be conscious or unconscious. When the ideal is conscious, then the whole organization has a way to judge and weigh any proposed action or plan: "Does this lead to the ideal?"

An example of an ideal is to make computers accessible to and usable by the masses. Another ideal is to transform the waste streams of our cities into compost. Another is to raise the level of health in the country by bringing nutritious food to the dinner tables of America.

The advantage of a conscious ideal is that it unleashes a great power latent in people. People work hard for their own gain, recognition and growth. They work even harder for a group they identify with. But people go beyond all limits for an ideal; no sacrifice is too great. For an ideal, people give their lives, because the pursuit of an ideal makes life worth living.