Are you interested in knowing why some organizations last and others don’t?

For an organization, whatever its nature, to exist and reach its objectives, it is necessary to fulfill a minimal level of motivation of the people who are part of it.

These motivations can be either external, i.e. for extrinsic reasons, or internal, i.e. for intrinsic and transcendent reasons according to what is stated in the book “Leadership” by Juan Antonio Pérez López.

Three aspects can be distinguished about  the value of an organization for its members:

  1. The efficiency of an organization: it is a measure of how capable is the organization to achieve the support of the individuals through the satisfaction of the needs that can be satisfied for extrinsic reasons. It will depend on the extent to which the value of the products and/or services delivered to the environment are higher enough than the starting elements so that the difference in value can be distributed as incentives.
  2. The attractiveness of the organization: it is the degree of motivation achieved by internal reasons, regardless of the incentives received as a consequence if its integration. It is the capability of the organization to attract people for different reasons than those the organization can give them, for what the person can do there and not for what he or she can get from it.
  3. The unity of the organization: It expresses the extent to which  people’s actions are fostered by transcendent reasons. This is the idea of identification, the integration of the actions to recognize the value of what it is done to other people.

These aspects are not independent but tied by structural rules:

  1. The essential rule for every organization is that a minimal efficiency and attractiveness is needed for it to exist.
  2. The greater the attractiveness, less efficiency is necessary.
  3. The greater the unity, the greater the efficiency of the organization.
  4. The relationship between the unity and the efficiency constitutes the most basic property of the organization.
  5. Any organization can and should sacrifice efficiency and attractiveness to favor its unity.

But they don’t always complement each other; sometimes inconvenients appear.

The conflictive relationship between attractiveness and efficiency

  1. The greater the attractiveness of an organization is, less incentives are necessary to motivate the people that are part of it. Therefore, it is not necessary to motivate people to do things when they are motivated enough.
  2. This means that the greater the attractiveness of an organization, the easier it is to guarantee the minimum efficiency required for its survival.
  3. Every attempt to maximize the efficiency will diminish the attractiveness.
  4. Every attempt to maximize the attractiveness will diminish the efficiency.
  5. As everything in life, it is about finding a balance.

An organization is a conjunction of possible coordinations of human actions. To survive, its operations shouldn’t be inconsistent or inefficient, but they must accomplish their objective progressively better without putting at risk its self-preservation. To do so, the motivation of the people or the value perceived by the the are the key.

Motivation is the force that drives us to carry out anything, it gives us enough reasons to do something.

To motivate is key in any organization, since you can give people their own engine, so there is no need to push them; it is a goal freely accepted and smartly known.

A motivating manager is the one that has managed to convey the reason why something must be done; a motivated subordinate is capable of receiving the message.

What are you waiting for to be this engine?

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