It seems quite a rude way to motivate people, considering Man’s heavenly nature.

Either people are intimidated or they are lured into doing something.  This of course accounts for many of any enterprise’s failures.  If I remember correctly, the Spanish conqueror Cortéz set his ships to fire to prevent his crews from sailing back to their home-land.

And the saying “a mariner’s promises” still leaves deep scars in many a girls’ soul.

Along the centuries, human culture has collected – or should have to – a huge amount of data on human minds and souls.  But it seems that these data are still largely ignored by those who control the destinies of the human race.

MANAGEMENT PRATTLE
Management practitioners prattle more and more often of motivating their employees but – in the end – their practices are still based on the ancient stick and carrot behavioral management systems.

I wonder whether they would accept these systems applied to themselves.

There are a few points that should be considered when asking people for something, or expecting them of:

First: no one is compelled to give one else anything, unless the former wants or needs to.

Second: if one wants to be free, he or she has to let others feel free, too.

Third: one shall not ask anyone for what no one ever can or will give him or her: looking for water in a desert may not be the wisest thing to do.

Fourth: expression of sincere gratitude does not close the ask and give motivation circle but opens an upward spiral.

We have to take care.  Consumer prices are ever increasing.  Quality of public services are decreasing every day.  TV tells us that social safety and security are less and less stable.  It is no wonder that only in the underdeveloped countries that population continues to grow, just as it grew in our now sophisticated countries fifty years ago.

It would seem that ignorance is instrumental to life.

We must therefore neither stick our companies with standards that put excessive constraints on them, nor carrot-luring them with dream-like budget visions.

A Standard is a Standard is a Standard.  Motivation cannot be subjected to any standard: although almost undefinable and surely impalpable, it certainly works.