Motivation is one of the most debated and perhaps poorly described personal psychological aspects of humans. There are countless articles titled something like "How to motivate your employees", "Managing motivation" and "Mastering motivation", most of which I find to be nonsense.

Scientific management as formulated by Winslow Taylor and most scientific management schools for over 50 years ignored motivation as a separate topic, you pay people to work and they work. Result: disengaged employees - not a problem when you need their hands and not their minds; or pay them per part, so they churn out the parts without any concern for quality.

I remember visiting a famous American car maker who invented mass assembly and they did just that; the workers were paid as bit part workers. The more parts they made, the more they were paid, hence quality was ignored in the quest to meet or exceed a quota. This was also the case for a lot of salesmen who sold on commission.

It often feels that way today when many call center people call you or you call them, in fact when you read the industry articles, it is often about reducing time per call. Treat people as respected individuals? No, we have a sales target to reach!

One psychologist and theorist that I find useful in Maslow. He created the hierarchy of needs. The initial (what I called basic or truncated) hierarchy of needs is shown on the right. It is the model most people are familiar with. It is not Maslow's final model!

Maslow formulated a positive account of human behavior which focused on what goes right. He was interested in human potential, and how we fulfill that potential. As he studied more human motivation as reflected in their value and norms and behaviors, he refined his model, first adding transcendence - which I find particularly important, and then cognitive and aesthetic needs, which are also important in more sophisticated societies.

Modern management then proposed a model in which leaders and managers provide motivation to employees. This led to a boom in motivation workshops, most of which are nonsense. It also led to highly damaging practices for organizational and team culture like Management by Objectives, individual annual assessment and salary setting, commission based payment, and short term incentive plans. These often lead to individual behavior at odds with overall team and organizational achievement. Post-modern management proposes another model leading to motivated employees, in which the environment is subtly controlled so that employee motivation is improved. Systems theory describes behavior as an outcome of the system and its forces, as if individuals have limited or no influence.

Always remember 'models are models, reality is different!'. Use models to help you understand, but do not blindly accept they are a 100% description of reality. Models simplify reality so it makes it easier to understand some aspects of reality.