Great question. We’d love to tell you.
If there is one thing, this time of year, that we truly need “mo’” of… it’s motivation. With leave days loading and the blue skies calling us to ditch our desks, how does one motivate yourself, not to mention your team?
Well, here is the thing about motivation, it’s layered. It is not as simple as incentivising with targets, or planning more pizza parties. Through unpacking the principles of Primed to Perform and Total Motivation (TOMO), our leadership team has come to recognise this multi-layeredness (or, mo’-ness) of motivation.
Look for the Book
Primed to Perform is a book by Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor and is a must read, not just for management teams, but individuals as well. Getting a greater understanding of what motivates us, is as beneficial to an individual as it is to an organisation. Tough to motivate others when we don’t quite understand what motivates ourselves, no?
Well, this book, is a page turner for people from all the above categories. Once you start peeling back the layers of limiting beliefs around motivation, you can’t stop. At a very high level overview, the book unpacks the notion that there are both positive and negative motivators and essentially your Total Motivation (TOMO) is the net effect of these. Play, purpose and potential contribute to one’s motivation whilst economic pressure, emotional pressure and inertia detract from it.
In the interest of keeping this piece, Mo’ business and less book club, we’ll focus more on what our team learnt through the process of unpacking TOMO. To learn mo’ about the motivator and the intricacies of the book… get yourself a copy! (It’s worth it)
Mo’ about our team and TOMO
The Mo’ you know, the Mo’ you grow, so our leadership team went through a 6-part training course on TOMO. And here are some of their key take outs:
Firstly, from the point of view of our People Ops team on why they chose ToMo:
The ideas are simple enough and they don’t use jargon that might make you feel stupid.
So, we know the nature of work has changed right? And so should the world of work accordingly. We aren’t in the industrial revolution anymore and carrot and stick also doesn’t work anymore. And that’s what the book is about – you can’t motivate someone with only punishment or rewards anymore. The reason we brought it in is not only to have managers rethink how they think about their job and how they do it, but also be able to take these ideas to their teams and start influencing them.
Linda Walters – People Ops Manager
Secondly, a couple of highlights across our leadership team:
ToMo is more than a number. It is the thinking behind what it means to be human and how humans are motivated. Understanding of human motivation has come a long way since the 70s. ToMo is a great way of understanding what drives motivation and reducing it all to a single number that can be measured.
Sam Clarke – CEO
Often, we are so busy with the business of work and we forget what has an impact on our purpose and how this motivates us to be a better performing company. I’m paying much more attention on measuring this with my team, especially making sure we are all Playing at work. Trust is one of the biggest contributors in getting this element right.
Brian Howe – General Manager UK
Simply setting expectations of teams and individuals and then empowering them to organise themselves and determine how to get the work done actually gets the work done.
Justin Marshall – Head of CX
It is the first (simple) business framework that takes the people in the business, the full human experience, and align their goals with that of the business.
Diederik Hattingh – Senior Development Manager
Businesses make it or fail based on its people. Understanding what motivates people helps to motivate them.
Wim Morris – Chief Operating Officer
I really like the Primed to Perform framework as it gives a foundation and language for a high-performance culture that isn’t just “exceed your target or you’re fired”. It actually tells us what to do to have a healthy high performing team. Play as a motivator is my “favourite”, as often people don’t associate their day jobs with “Play”: something that is exciting and fun and fulfilling. This changes that narrative and tells you that you are going to better at your job if you actually find a way to “Play” in it. The fact that we have words for these important elements of ToMo has meant that we have started speaking the same language about the things we see in our business.
Lizl Barnard – Chief of People
To summarize all the above and why ToMo is Mo’ than you bargain for, a core nugget that stood out from the team’s feedback of ToMo was this :
ToMo is finding the joy, meaning and reason in the work that you do.
And frankly what pursuit is mo’ important than this?
