Motivation and Mediocrity

I was having a conversation with a colleague yesterday concerning a number of things, including creating items (business aides) for them to use to comply with our systems.  I confess I'm a bit less generous than he is, and made the case that while tools can be provided if they're not used that's not my fault.  We continued into the discussion about responsibility of individuals versus the responsibility of those providing compliance oversight provide everything to make that happen, including make things very easy (i.e. "spoon feeding").  Finally, asked why I though some areas were not improving, I simply said "They don't care.  People don't care.  And until they do, things won't really get better."

I buried the thought and continued on through my day until, finishing up my post-lunch lemonade, I found the following quote from Andrew Carnegie:

"People unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity."

Poof.  Epiphany.

It's certainly true that without motivation people may accomplish something, but it sure won't be much are or of good quality.  It's equally true that self motivation is far more productive than motivation enforced from above - also known as "fear" or "command structure".   The question is, where does that self motivation - the best kind, the most product - come from?

I think it comes from one of two places.  The first place is the motivation for self - that what I am doing will ultimately benefit me in some way and I can see the way that it will benefit me.  This is why people work at low-paying jobs to do the things they love or workout when it's convenient or not, because they see the ultimate good.

The other place is the motivation of others - that what I am doing is ultimately going to benefit someone else and I can see the way that it will benefit them.  This again can be as simple as working at something I don't love to support my family or doing something that is tedious and thankless because it serves a larger purpose, such as cooking a meal for someone who needs it or enforcing regulations to make sure a product that is supposed to help someone is well made.

There is an alternative, as Carnegie puts it, one that many people are simply not willing to acknowledge but is arguably as expected as the law of gravity:  if you can't or won't self motivate, there is only one other option:  mediocrity.  And this mediocrity you must be content with - if you will not work with the one, you will have the other.

So here's the question, a question that as I think about it I'm sure companies, corporation, teams and governments have asked throughout history:  how do we get those who are under us to motivate themselves?

It's a good question.  People who are motivated are generally better workers, more careful workers, and more driven workers.  Even if what they are doing is not directly related to the source of their motivation, they do what they do because of that motivation. 

(And when I use worker I use it in the largest sense possible:  you can substitute creators, volunteers, parents, etc.  It's doing anything that relates to the motivation).

What's your motivation?  What's mine?  If we don't know, if we can't verbalize it and understand, we are almost certainly doomed to mediocrity - and this is something we can only blame ourselves for.