As a business person I have never yet had the resources of Apple, Google and Facebook. I lack the ability to motivate purely on money. The fact is many lack the will to have companies driven by such money. Instead I see “money as the consequence,” of successful execution of our goals.
Since ever I studied success and decided who to emulate I found those that had passion, and those that were in it to change the world, more attractive, than those simply stockpiling resources they could say where their own.
Strangely no matter which type of leader I met both beneath them could often share common purpose and that purpose was quite simply a cause.
The people of the west today luckily don’t face war as it was faced in world war 1,2, but that lack of common cause also means there has been a lack of common purpose across the populations.
Companies often fill that gap in a search for cause, sometimes but not always through real structured purposes.
As companies grow staff can feel a sense of ownership and identity, regardless of their orientation. Strangely this type of cause can sometimes be stronger in business run by a money focused corporate, that’s probably because often those money focused businesses can grow quickly off the economics of success.
As companies define a vision with an aim to set culture, again staff can feel common cause. This is where those companies that try to right a wrong excel. Often those attracted to a vision want to come work on the problem. A problem with vision here is that often problems are complex and cause driven people exist in different proportions in different industries.
As an example if someone had a vocation to be a teacher, there are going to be few of those teachers get their satisfaction of solving the general problem of “education,” when they could be actually live and breath the improvement of one child’s future.
For those like my own company trading as Clinisent focused on human health it can often be difficult to find all the elements needed to create the whole. How many developers out there distinctly said they wanted to develop a platform that would give every patient in the world access to the fundamental health information that the patient and their family needs?
Causal companies can find themselves searching for needles in haystacks, but when they find them those needles can shine very bright, both bringing purpose to employee and zeal to the mission. Money is a big motivator to one extent, quality of work environment another, the time and attention paid to the staff member/ investment in their future all contribute.
At Clinishare we have lofty aspirations to “change the world of health,” we want to change how fundamental healthcare information is distributed between those that need it when they need it, and we have a talented multi-disciplinary team who make that possible from Medical Doctors, to PhD’s to Security specialists, Data Analysts, Developers, Business Analysts, Designers and Executives. Of course not everyone joined purely because of our cause but now our team are together, its been clear that this common cause, breeds common language and the fundamentals of shared and common purpose.
Cause only brings purpose when we deliver. For us that is a long journey to realisation. We have to set realisable achievable time bound goals. Letting excitement get the better of us could be our downfall, as it takes a long time to make an impact in the world, but we eat the elephant one piece at a time and even with the most worthy cause demotivation sets in if people don’t think they are contributing to purpose. For us now the fact we have started to make impacts in many countries around the world has cemented cause and purpose together. Thus returning the fact that in an emergent rapidly growing company like our own, where people make bigger and bigger impacts on the world as individuals, that perhaps cause and individual purpose become intertwined they as above become our common language so to speak.
In conclusion the last piece in the puzzle on motivation, that few can replicate is cause. From developer to bricklayer motivation from cause just works harder, delivers better and “gets the problem,” more accurately than any person motivated by the trappings.
I’m drawn to the conclusion that great happy motivated staff are like great happy and motivated founders, they get their purpose, identity and meaning from cause.
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