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Making lots of money is a great idea, but in reality, the meaning behind business is to create a lot of something that people will consider useful and want to obtain. The main goal of a company should be an exact wording of this aspiration, not the expression of a desire to receive as much money as possible.
“I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in.”—Anita Roddick, The Body Shop
Of course, you do not get paid for your aspirations alone, and rarely do aspirations without tangible results receive support. However, to say that the main goal of a business is to make profits is the same as saying that the goal of a human is to breathe. Without being able to breathe, a person ca
“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.”—Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media founder and CEO
Any good idea can be brought to the point of absurdity. For example, since ancient times there have been practices in which followers try to improve themselves with sophisticated ways of breathing. Likewise, there are business practices that claim that proper money handling and money management are the keys to success. This is only partly true. It is really important to handle money wisely, but good money management alone does not lead to success. That is because money management is simply a tool for managing the exchange process of your product for money.
Increased profits and growth of gross income can be wonderful mid-level goals and important milestones in a company’s growth, but they are never main goals that can lead you to victory. Only a person who has completely lost his or her ideals sees personal needs as the only reason for owning a business and can accept making money as its main goal. Such an viewpoint is acceptable for an unskilled worker, but is not acceptable for someone who has started a company.
Chapter 6. Motivation
You have probably noticed that people have various levels of motivation with respect to their work. Some begin work with enthusiasm, but for others, it takes a great deal of effort to make them work, even under the constant supervision of a superior. Some are really interested in their jobs, yet others see their job simply as a harsh necessity. It is all about motivation. In modern society, motivation can mean a person’s desire to work, the actions a manager performs to achieve results, or even a company's wage system. In its simplest terms, the word motivation is defined as an impulse that propels a person toward some activity. Motivation comes from the word motive, which means “an incentive, purpose, or reason for some action.” Motive, in turn, comes from the Latin word movēre, which means “to move.” Thus motivation is something that makes people move in some area of activity.
While managing companies, I noticed that there are those who are dedicated to their jobs, and those who are free riders, who are willing to go along for the ride as long as someone else does the driving. It is pretty easy to deal with the first type of person. She is loyal to the company and produces, to the extent of her competency, good results. To put it simply, these are people you can rely on. When there is a need to solve urgent problems, you call upon these individuals to obtain the needed support. L. Ron Hubbard provided a good classification of different levels of motivation.4 He described four main levels of motivation, from highest to lowest:
Duty
Personal Conviction
Personal Gain
Money
Duty
The highest motivation level is duty. On this level, people consider a company they work for to be part of their lives. They are loyal to the company and its interests. They are reliable and give support to managers. There may be many people working for a company, but rarely are the majority those with a duty level of motivation.
Personal Conviction
People who are not company patriots but consider themselves professionals and try to do their jobs well according to their personal standards of professionalism are people on the personal conviction level of motivation. For example, this could be an accountant who does not care what the company does or how well it succeeds, but by virtue of personal conviction, thinks it is important to ensure that the accounting department is run properly.
Personal Gain
The next level of motivation is personal gain. People on this level do their jobs just to get some benefits from the company. These benefits range from the intangible, such as experience, knowledge, and networking, to the tangible, such as the company’s convenient location, compensation, and other benefits. These people often tell you that they are ready to deliver fantastic results if you provide higher pay and better benefits. Sometimes they sound very convincing. If you have ever gone along with this kind of person’s plea, then you know it does not work. Their level of production does not increase in proportion to their appetite.
Money
The last level of motivation is money, and it is actually pretty rare to find a person at this level, as this is a level of motivation in which, strictly speaking, a person does not even care what he does as long as he makes more money doing it. Although many people say they are interested only in money, this is not actually true. Just try offering an engineer who constantly complains about being underpaid a better-paying job as sales manager. Typically, he would tell you that he wants to work in his specialty. This means that his level of motivation is not money, but personal conviction. People who are on the money level of motivation usually have some serious money troubles and are ready to do anything possible to solve them.
It should be noted that the higher levels of motivation are accompanied by the lower ones. Thus a person on the level of duty is also motivated by the personal conviction, personal gain, and money levels. The fact that he has a duty level of motivation does not mean he would not be interested in money. Money is just not the first priority. When he acts, he thinks first about the company, and only then does he consider the reward he might get. This is why you should be careful not to stigmatize somebody who asks for a raise. Such a request does not necessarily mean that money is the person's main motivation. In order to determine the person’s true motivation, you should look at what drives him when he does his job, not concentrate on whether he asks for more money.
A person on the personal conviction level of motivation acts according to his or her own beliefs about what is right and wrong. Of course, he also operates on the personal gain and money motivation levels, but not on the level of duty motivation. With this type of person, as long as his or her principles and views correspond with the company’s goals, there are no problems. However, if in order to achieve the company’s goals you have to ask for something from him that does not agree with his beliefs about what is right and wrong, you will face problems in managing this kind of person. For example, say that you hired a new chief accountant who is functioning on the personal conviction level of motivation, and his conviction is that the accounting department should be perfectly in order. He has his own idea about what “perfectly in order” means. You are happy about finding such a great person because your idea about how an accounting department should function means not having any problems with the IRS. As time goes by and your company becomes more structured, you notice that the accounting department slows down the company’s work flow. For example, it takes too long to get some orders written and to account for financial transactions. You decide to change the work procedures in the accounting department and find that your chief accountant, who completely supported all of your ideas before and seemed very professional to you, all of a sudden starts working against your ideas and creating problems. The reason for this is simple. He operates on the personal conviction level of motivation and is not motivated to work in the company’s best interest, but, rather, in accordance with his own principles.
4
L. Ron Hubbard “Promotion and Motivation”, in The Organization Executive Course: Public Division, vol. 6 (Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1991), 158.