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DSS: Primed to Perform

DSS ⇒ Dangerously Short Summary
by: Ivan Cruz

The whole premise of the book is simple: “Why you work affects how well you work”.
Based on that sentence the book sets off to highlight key aspects of motivation. The
book’s observations are based on years of research and observation of corporate
cultures and work ethics.
They identify six basic motives behind why people work:

The ones that strengthen performance:

Play occurs when you’re engaging in an activity simply because you enjoy doing it.
The work itself is its reward. Scientists describe this motive as “intrinsic.”

Purpose occurs when you feel the purpose motive in the workplace when your
values and beliefs align with the impact of the work.

Potential occurs when you do the work because it will eventually lead to something
you believe is important, such as your personal goals.

And the ones that weaken it:

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 Emotional pressure occurs when emotions such as disappointment, guilt, or
shame compel you to perform an activity.

Economic pressure occurs when you do an activity solely to win a reward or avoid
punishment. If money is the sole reason you’re participating in an activity, it will
typically diminish performance.

Inertia occurs when your motive for working is so distant from the work itself that
you can no longer say where it comes from—you do what you do simply because
you did it yesterday. This leads to the worst performance of all.

Then the book shifts its focus to the two types of performance the authors have
identified and defined:

Tactical performance is the ability to execute against a plan.

Adaptive performance is defined as the ability to diverge from a plan

Both are equally important and they work together pushing and pulling like yin and
yang.

The driving idea here is that the type of motivation will help that motivation to stick and
become self-managed motivation. So is not about rewards and threats, but more about
inspiration and purpose.

Too rainbows and unicorns for your data-driven mind??

Don’t worry this book has more than enough data to back that premise.

In business, we tend to obsess over the “how”, as in “Here’s how to do it.”

Yet we rarely discuss the “why”, as in “Here’s why we’re doing it.”
But it’s often difficult to do something exceptionally well if we don’t know the reasons
we’re doing it in the first place.

Any culture can be engineered for the better.

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