Saturday, June 29, 2013

Inspire, Motivate, what?

Money can motivate.  Exemplary employees will stand out and get rewarded for the fruits of their hard labor, sure that’s possible. Nurture team spirit?  Sure, everything is always possible.

However it is wishful thinking or maybe delusional is the word to think that money alone especially money with extra added baggage an inverted pyramid would be the magic bullet in solving employee motivation. 


People are diverse and that makes a cure all problematic.  A group of people or an organization can even be more problematic.

In a group more so in an organization agency heads need to inspire as much as threaten.  Pamper as much as holding something back as a measure of a reward system.  To rely on precise and supposedly empirical mathematics the likes of an inverted pyramid is inviting disaster.

The Performance Based IncentiveSystem presumes too much that that an organization is like an Olympics wherein there are three levels of prizes: gold, silver, and bronze; and that pageantry and wholehearted acceptance follows the award of these prices. 

To be fair the dream is not outside the realm of possibility.  But then if you watch enough Olympics especially those behind the scenes or after the games you will know that even the most immaculate of sports events is not without its cheating scandals.

Money can illicit an entire host of possibilities in man, both good and bad.  Money can inspire greed.

Coincidentally an inverted pyramid can bear resemblance to a tip of a spear.  Uninspired, unattended, and tired, an organization will not be able to reach the highest ideals of the Olympic model, but it can go down to a place where it is much closer to, a Roman Senate.  The inverted pyramid becomes destructive.


With uninspiring leaders all around, that’s very possible.

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