"Primed to perform" - 2 minutes book review

Create productive organisation culture - “Primed to Perform”.

Books highlights 6 motives that have most impact on team performance:

Direct (positive)
- Play - joy from work motivates you;
- Purpose - you know why you are doing your job;
- Potential - your work improves you;
Indirect (Negative)
- Emotional pressure - guild, shame used for pressure;
- Economic pressure - bonuses and salary used for pressure;
- Inertia - you don’t know why you are doing your job.

Besides that you need to set “correct” goals, they could be:

Tactical
- Decrease expenses by 5% in Q2;
Adaptive
- Find a way to optimise production line to increase ROI;

Instead of embedding a solution in the goal statement, give a team more flexibility.

Lastly, always keep track of “cobra effect” - a term used to describe a solution that incentivizes you to do a bad thing to achieve a goal. So whenever you set goals for a team, make sure you don’t force them to compete with each other or even do something worst.