Hi, everyone. Today I want to talk a little bit about motivators, and specifically about the difference in types of motivation that work well when you’re trying to drive a faster pace of innovation.

There’s been a myriad of research that shows that for doing very defined, high stakes tasks, rewards can work well. So you know, special bonuses or incremental pay can work really, really well when there’s a defined task because it gets people to focus and execute. Unfortunately, that same research shows that when you’re trying to do a more creative task, those same high stakes motivations actually hurt creativity because that over-focus keeps people from really opening the aperture to try new things. That doesn’t mean we can’t motivate. It’s just a different set of motivators work well, and there’s a lot of recognition for that, and others. But today, specifically, I want to talk a little bit about purpose.

Almost all companies have a purpose. And I often ask executives, “How much time do you spend trying to connect to what your department, or your workgroup, or your division, does to that purpose, and how you actually fit into that?” These are important considerations because those intrinsic motivators are often what get people to think about work, you know, when they’re on the run in the morning, or thinking about solving a problem when they’re in the shower. That can foster a sense of, you know, “We’re doing this for a greater purpose to help expand the aperture of what your organization is capable of doing.”

So again, process, agile, DevOps, all those things are important, but if you don’t have people with the right mindset and motivation, it’s hard to get people to be as motivated as you want them to be. I was talking to the CEO of a large global bank, and they spend a lot of time thinking about financial inclusion and investing in financial inclusion in the third world. And that was talking about “why,” and the motivation around that. But it was interesting, I was later talking to the CIO, who said, “Hey, it helps us to attract talent, when people can spend some of their time doing that because a lot of the same code that developers are writing help the bank in those global situations. And that, almost more than anything else, helps to attract, retain, and get people to be working extra hours to deliver because they can tangibly see the benefit that they can have more broadly.

So I’d highly encourage you to go back, to really think about the mission of your company, and how you can apply it and connect people in their work to it. It’s an incredibly important motivator, especially when you’re trying to drive a faster pace of innovation and creativity. Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.

[To hear more of Jim’s views on culture and open leadership follow him on LinkedIn to see his video series, “An Open Conversation with Jim.”]

Innovation can be difficult. Having to present and justify novel ideas while taking several risks into account can certainly ramp up the pressure that innovators feel. Obstacles can seem indomitable, goals can seem far-fetched, and efforts can seem futile. Focusing too deeply on an issue can preclude our sight of the bigger picture, motivation, or purpose.

Jim mentions an interesting distinction in motivation between structured and creative tasks. Innovation tends to fall in the second category since innovative ideas are, by no means, normal; they require people to think outside the box. But what truly drives the ability to do so? As Jim had discussed, a lot of research has shown that “high stakes” motivators actually impede creativity, a key component of innovation. Instead of focusing too heavily on what’s at stake, it may be more beneficial to ask yourself, “What am I really trying to accomplish?”

Answering this question requires a realization of one’s true purpose in innovating. Our instincts might associate accomplishing tasks with satisfying whoever assigned them but when it comes to innovation, such a motivator rarely produces astounding results. It might get the job done but it usually does nothing beyond that. Innovation usually results in broad, significant change, and envisioning that change can help innovators to embody genuine purpose in their work.

Another step to driving innovation, as Jim mentioned, is applying purpose. However, many still struggle with finding that purpose, a process that can either keep ideas in someone’s notepad or convert ideas into the “next big thing.” Once someone has a strong sense of that purpose, innovation becomes at least a little bit more seamless. Interestingly enough, IBM’s slogan is “Think.” And in times where innovation is heavily encouraged or even demanded, it becomes absolutely essential to do just that.

My name is Ato Boldon. I am currently the lead track analyst for NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. I’m also a world-class coach. I have about 70 NFL active clients, and I also coach one of the fastest teenagers in the world. Prior to that, I was a professional athlete for about 10 years. 4 Olympic medals, and 4 World Championship medals for Trinidad Tobago. And before that I was at UCLA where I set the NCAA and collegiate meet records, as well as the UCLA School Records, which still exist, somehow.

The young lady that I’m coaching now, Brianna Williams of Jamaica, as a high school, junior, she ran the sixth fastest time in the world in the 100 meters. So that person, that sort of individual has to have some built in attitude; “I’m willing to do what it takes, I’m willing to put in the work, I am focused, I’m committed, I’m thinking about the long haul.” It’s not that, as a coach, I have to somehow, you know, wave some magic wand to get her to think like that. The truth is, that’s already in her. What I have to do is, I have to remind her, I have to encourage her, and I have to convince her because conviction is a big part of it too. I like to I like to remind my athletes all the time that, one of my favorite sayings is; Champions are convinced. LeBron didn’t go into the finals thinking, “Well, you know, if maybe, you know, the team plays well, we’ll beat the Miami Heat.” No, he was convinced from the time last year when they didn’t make the playoffs. His attitude was “It’s not gonna take long, Laker Nation, hold on, we will be there.” 12 months later, here we are. So champions are convinced. So, I think that I, as a coach, look for elements of what I had, in young athletes, because I know if they have that initial seed of, “I’m willing to do it, I’m not going to rely just on my talent, I will be committed, I am willing to do what it takes,” then they’re already on the right track. And that’s not something that I’m necessarily gonna have to instill in them. It’s already in there.

[This sound byte is from an interview with Ato Boldon for the Longitude.site Olympian Mindset project. To see more insights on the project, stay tuned for upcoming announcements.]

Obviously, Ato knows what it takes to be a champion, there is no doubt about that. After all, not only is he a champion, but he has coached champions. I believe that this distinction adds further credibility because I am sure that by witnessing other athletes’ accomplishments, his formula for winning has only improved. Therefore, I agree with his opinion regarding the importance of conviction.

I think a champion should be convinced that they can win, but victory is never guaranteed. I used to wrestle in high school, and I remember the corruptive ego that I had going into tournaments. I would over-analyze my opponents’ stats: their win records, previous opponents, high school, etcetera. Of course, Ato would probably point out that a good coach would discourage this, and he would be right. My coach hated it, but nevertheless, I persisted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to kick the habit until my most disappointing defeat at my last tournament in high school. I entered the tournament ranked number 2, which would have guaranteed all-conference distinction and advancement to sectionals. But true champions know that nothing is guaranteed. I ended up losing the clinching match against someone that I previously dominated earlier in the season. I was humiliated and proceeded to lose the next two matches for the consolation bracket, leading to a disappointing 6^th place finish.

Fortunately, that experience taught me quite a bit about what it takes to become a champion despite not being one. I learned about how important it is to not allow your ego to replace hard work and determination. On the other hand, I realized that I lacked the confidence in myself because I knew that I did not work sufficiently and instead relied on the wishful thinking that my previous victories would guarantee more.

But enough about me because I want to return to what Ato said about conviction because it is so important that we remember that champions need to be convinced that they will win. And that true conviction can only come with having put in the work necessary to know that you have the ability to earn your victory, rather than it be guaranteed. 

I am Julie Walker. I’m a navigation engineer at Intuitive surgical. I have a PhD in mechanical engineering.

I really love the combination of human robotic interfaces and so especially coming from my background in haptics where the person is physically touching, it’s a lot more interesting to me to work on a robotic system that has to interact with a human user.

There definitely are days where nothing is working and I feel really grumpy. I think trying to treat my job as a learning experience is a healthy attitude for me to understand that every time I’m struggling with something, it’s because I’m learning something new. And that is why I wanted to take this job in the first place. It was because I knew that it would give me the opportunity to learn a lot of new skills. I think in particular for me, coming from mechanical engineering where I did a lot of software, but I wasn’t writing software, for a commercial product, I wasn’t writing software that other people had to use. It was just for me and so if it wasn’t very good, that’s fine. And now I’m in a production code base with a much higher standard than what I had written before. And so I am spending a lot of time trying to get better at writing code that is easy to read, that is more stable, that is going to be more useful in many applications. And so every time I feel like I haven’t done a good job on some, some implementing something in code, I know that I’m getting better and that it’s, and I get feedback from all my teammates and I can improve. It sometimes doesn’t feel good to have a lot of feedback but you don’t get better by doing things correctly. You get better by doing things wrong. It makes me feel better to think about it that way.

[To see more of Julie’s views, explore our Career Conversations feature “Role of medical robots in healthcare.”]

Thank you, Julie, for sharing your experience and thoughts.

Having moody and slow days are situations that we all experience, especially if it’s something we have to do, but are quite new to it. The worry of failing or not being good enough comes to mind, but once we actually start the task, it feels much more motivating than having thought of. Realizing that learning something new motivates to be persistent and see the outcomes is one of the best situations.

I had a similar experience when I started learning coding. At first I was a bit skeptical about it, and wondered if I will be able to succeed. But the more time I gave it, got feedback from my friends and tried different exercises, the better I got in that skill. All it took for me was just realizing that if I stick through the struggle, which is the hard part, I would end up with a useful and necessary skill. Now I try to develop this behavior to other areas that I’m interested in, knowing that it is worth going through the struggle if I’m learning something new.

My name is Michael Sam.

I currently work at Stafford High School as a history teacher and football coach.

Like many boys in Texas, I grew up on great food and quality football. My dream, from a very young age, was to play in the National Football League. I worked tirelessly for this dream to become a reality. From team workouts to individual sessions, others would say my life was consumed with the game. As I continued towards this dream, I began to view myself as others saw me, a football player, a jock. What motivated me had transitioned from just the love of the game to the approval or attention I received from others. During my sophomore year at Rice University, where I competed with for the Rice Owl football team, I had a career-ending injury. In the blink of an eye, everything that my identity was based on, being a college football player, and everything that I was working towards, was no more. In this juncture, I began to examine my life. Where I had been, where I was going, and how this life changing event impacted my hopes and dreams. During this season of my life, I realized that what drove me, the approval and attention of others, was not fulfilling. Instead it had gotten me to a point where I was hopeless. I no longer could be the person others expected me to be because I no longer could deliver those same results. It was at this point where I decided others opinions could not define my life. I had to have a motivation that was much bigger than people or circumstances.

Motivation is defined as the reason or reasons one has for action or behaving a particular way.

The reality is, in life, work, and relationships, our circumstances changes and people change, but you can remain consistent through the obstacles that come your way. The properly motivated individual will not ride the waves of life’s highs and lows, but will remain consistent. Their reason for completing their task, whether it be their vision for family or desire to climb the corporate ladder, will be much bigger than what others think, but it would be tied to their overall purpose in life.

In August 2020, I transitioned from a vocational ministry job to be a high school teacher and coach. My hours have tripled, the work is challenging in new ways, and I am not getting paid what I was, but I am as motivated as I have ever been. Why? I believe my life was created to be lived for the good of others, first beginning with the family, and then spreading to others. I have found, through self-examination and the observations of close friends, that I am most effective and happy in fulfilling this purpose when I am engaging, equipping, and empowering high school aged students, especially through sports.

As I wrap up, my tips for you all who are trying to find motivation in life, work, or even in relationships, is to start with your “why?” What is the reason you are involved with that person or organization or career? How does that reason connect with why you believe you were created? If you find yourself simply in a season of hardship, the value of your motivation is found in your ability to stay the course knowing that the prize at the end is worth the momentary challenges you will endure to achieve it. If there is no connection, maybe it’s time to change directions. Life is too short and there are too many opportunities out there for you to let time pass not doing what brings you life.

May your motivation not run dry, but be big enough to drive you through the high and lows of the ride called life.

That was a powerful note to end off on. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your story. It’s an important reminder to me and to all of us because we can only benefit from asking ourselves why we are doing what we’re doing.

One line in particular stands out to me and that is, “I believe my life is created to be lived for the good of others.” To Michael, that is being a phenomenal teacher and coach to students. To me, it’s studying so I can write policy to help Americans live better lives. Dedicating your life to social responsibility is tireless work, as Michael mentioned, but it’s also the most rewarding. I encourage you to ask yourselves the question Michael asks in all aspects of your life, because doing so will allow you to stay motivated, even in hardship. It will also allow you to embrace change, as Michael showed by talking about his switch from his ministry job to his teaching job. That is valuable advice for college students like me who may be entering the job market in the next few years. And it’s definitely something to keep in mind. Always look for something better, especially in places where you can increase your social impact. Those opportunities are out there. You just need to go looking for them.

Hey everyone, this is Micah Johnson out in Houston, Texas. I work in the finance industry. For the prior seven years I was the Senior Analyst, Head Trader, and Co-Portfolio Manager for the fourth largest team in Merrill Lynch. I left Merrill in August of 2019 to start my own shop, as I was finding opportunities for private transactions where we can we produce a superior performance relative to a lot of other structures. So, I left the firm to launch my own partnership to go after these opportunities.

I wanted to talk to you today about motivation. The way I’ve always thought about motivation is really focused around what I call “the two I’s,” as in the letter ‘I.’

So the first “I” would be “influence.” When I think of motivation, it’s something that is really awakened in you and that you express from the inside, outward. But in order for motivation to be awakened in you, you really need to have influences that are external, and that feed into your daily thinking and your daily approach toward whatever projects or goals you’re working on, no matter what that may be, whether at work or outside of work. And so at the end of the day, to stay motivated, it is your influence, in my opinion, that is most important. Specifically, your external influences. That can include the things you read daily and the things you listen to daily, whether it’s audio books or music. There are certain external influences that are going to contribute positively towards your goals and efforts, and some that will contribute negatively. And that includes the friends and colleagues you surround yourself with. I always use a saying that my mentor taught me in high school, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” Because, at the end of the day, whatever your influences are and whoever your friends are, a lot of times that will help really pave your path towards the future, whether positive or negative. So the first “I” is influence, and your external influences are what really drive the makeup of what you’re probably going to be reciprocating internally daily.

The second “I” is “inspiration,” and everyone gets their inspiration from different sources. For me, some of my greatest inspirations come from two sources. The first one comes from having mentors that I meet with in-person, sometimes even for lunch. Usually it’s going to be business owners, or colleagues in the finance industry who have been in the business for much longer than I have. And so my first area of inspiration is really those mentors and those business owners who I can have those conversations with. And then number two is really a lot of what I read. I’ll gain inspiration from sources that I read, whether it pertains to the industry I’m in, or whether it pertains to leadership. You put the two ‘I’s together: influence and inspiration. If you consistently bring those external sources into your daily activity and feed the right sources in that are positive towards your goal and your motivations, then usually that will result in you being motivated.

Hope this helps. Thanks guys.

I agree with Micah Johnson that motivation can be determined by external factors.  Without good inspiration and influences it can be nearly impossible to complete your personal goals. 

I think its wrong to assume that motivation comes naturally. Just as a person’s health is determined by the quality of the food they consume, a person needs to feed their motivation to keep it thriving. But I also think that this requires a lot of discipline. It can be hard to eliminate bad relationships or distractions that are already tangled in your life. But unfortunately there are only 24 hours in a day and to make room for positive influences you have to eliminate some of  the junk. 

My approach to motivation is to force myself to look at the bigger picture: “how will my actions now determine my future?” I think this is what makes highly motivated people unique. They are able to ignore their present cravings and orient themselves towards the future.

There are times when the energy is low. You might want to feel sorry for yourself but, what keeps me going and I think what keeps a lot of high performance athletes going is they remember when they were riding high, you know, they were at the Olympics, and I remember well. You know, I’ve been on television. I’ve been a broadcaster for all these years. And you don’t forget that. And so, I take little bits of victories, little victories, such as writing a really, really, really good article. It’s very gratifying when you do something well, and you don’t need anybody to tell you, or to direct you, or to push you, or to ask you to do it again. You just do it well. And I take a lot of pride in doing things well. And so those are those little victories of an article well done. Like when you hit send, you go, yeah, I killed this article. Like, I really put in everything I have to make this article a great one. And so it’s just those little victories that spur me on. You know, everything is connected. It’s all leading to something. So you know, running track, and then, you know, being a high performance athlete, and then, I’m working as a as a journalist.

First of all, it is important to identify what it is that you want: what’s your goal? It is important to identify the goal. Then understand that you may not attain that goal this year, or even the next year. If you stay true to the goal, and understand that you may not just simply skyrocket to that goal, you may have to work diligently, it may not be really flashy, cool, it may not be something that your peers think is particularly glamorous, you may have to take little bits and pieces of that goal before you get to the whole goal. But when you stay true to who you are, and what it is that you want to do in this world, with that kind of Olympic kind of mindset where you’re just like, “Okay, I know my friends are doing well and my girl is excelling at what she’s doing. She just got a promotion, and I’m still here feeling like I’m kind of disconnected.” But as long as you’re connected to your goal, as long as you don’t lose connection with that goal, then you are on the right track. It’s hard in this day and age of social media where you’re watching people and they’re living their life, and of course, they’re only showing you their best life. And so if we are to compare, that’s a deal breaker, you just don’t want to start comparing yourself to anybody. You really don’t. Like that’s the beauty of track and field. Yes, there’s a winner. There’s gold, silver, and bronze. But there, you’ll see people coming in like, eighth in the race, and then jumping up and down because they just ran a PB (personal best) because it’s really about you and how you perform so it’s still meaningful that you ran your fastest race ever. You can’t be sad if you didn’t win, right, because what was your goal? Oh, to run a PB. So you did your goal, you know, you accomplished that.

[This sound byte is from an interview with Rosey Edeh for the Longitude.site Olympian Mindset project. To see more insights on the project, stay tuned for upcoming announcements.]

Thank you Rosey for sharing your story.

Working steadily and diligently to achieve your goals can be exhausting. But taking a break, re-establishing your goal, and figuring out why you want to achieve a certain thing can supply you with new energy. This is something I personally experience on a daily basis and something that I also recognize in Rosey’s story. But hearing her story reminds me again that staying true to yourself can lead to great success, or may even be key to it. Yet the path towards it may not be glamorous. College isn’t glamorous. That is what I figured out a few weeks into my freshman year. But knowing my goal gets me through the toughest of times. And for those of you out there who are like “But what if I don’t know what my goal is?” Don’t worry, neither did I. So, I decided to stop looking too far ahead. Instead, I said, “I want to get a college degree, ‘full stop.’”

And just like a track athlete running a personal best, if that is my goal, then that is what I’ll focus on, even if it means coming in last. I’ll catch up later.

Hi, my name is Vivas Kumar. I’m a principal at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and an MBA student at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

When I think of the concept of motivation, I think it starts from having a vision of who you want to be or where you would like your organization to be in the future. And if you can imagine that vision every single day when you wake up and think about the steps that you need to get there, that right there is the source of motivation.

For me, my vision has been in building myself up to be a leader of an organization. For many years, every day, I would imagine what would it take for me to be the leader in this organization. And I found that by doing my job better every single day, I would one day rise to that occasion, and that motivated me to be a better version of myself at work, at home, every single day.

Once you become a leader, your whole job is to motivate and influence the people around you. And at that point, your job is to design the right incentives to motivate the people who work for you and work with you on a daily basis. Designing incentives also takes having a clear and compelling vision of the future. And once you’ve got that vision designed, then you can succeed in motivating anybody to achieve anything.

Thank you Vivas, those were some excellent points. It’s very important for us to hold that future image of ourselves in our head so that we may know what we are working towards. Our behaviors in the present lead to that future self, so it is our behaviors that are representative of our motivations. These behaviors are influenced by our environment, internal factors, and sociocultural aspects of our lives that makes us who we are and what we want to do.

These future images can be defined by goals we set for ourselves which are an important part to the process, whether they are long-term or short-term goals. With our goals, it’s important to make a plan to reach them. There is a saying that goes “a goal without a plan is just a dream.” Breaking things down to this fundamental level can help anyone in the process of achieving what they have set their hearts on, and it is this process that allows anyone to find the motivation to accomplish anything.

Hi, this is Ogonna Nnamani Silva. I grew up in Normal, Illinois. It is a town two hour south of Chicago.

I never thought I would be an athlete, which is quite interesting. I lived with asthma. I was first diagnosed with asthma at two. My childhood was often defined by ER visits and hospitalizations. It was a tough time, but I was really fortunate to have incredible doctors that took great care of me, their treatment, and their support. And they just gave me hope to keep trying to get better. And I’m really fortunate for their care. So it was the doctors that inspired me to one day try to do the same thing for others. I was so appreciative of all that they did for me and my entire family. And I said, “You know what, I want to do that one day.”

I had a hard time with physical activity, especially with the asthma, so I never thought of myself as an athlete. And a lot of things in life are mental. And of course, you can’t prevent asthma attacks all the time. And you can’t just will yourself mentally to get over things at times. I know that. But when you are feeling well, you still have that dark cloud of the asthma haunting you. I certainly did growing up. And so for me, I could never shake that barrier until I watched the Olympic games with Jackie Joyner-Kersee competing in 1992, which I will never forget. She was the best athlete of all time, I would say. And I really love her for so many reasons, but I love that she grew up in Illinois. She’s from East St. Louis. She played basketball, volleyball, and track, so she was a phenomenal athlete. She was a legend both in Illinois and throughout the country, so to see her compete and win a gold medal in the heptathlon was and still is the best display of athleticism that I’ve ever seen. She’s outstanding. She won the gold and I was blown away by her performance. But then part of me was like, “You know what, I don’t think I’d ever compete at that level one day.” And luckily, I stuck around for the commercials. She had a commercial talking about her asthma. I couldn’t believe that she had asthma. And she was reaching all these athletic achievements. So that moment was the most important moment of my life, I would say, because she told me that, “I have a difficulty, and I’m able to overcome it.” So she was the mental model for me as an athlete that told me that I can compete too. And so I still had a long way to go before I was able to run and jump. But having that mental model for me was so important.

[This sound byte is from an interview with Ogonna for the Longitude.site Olympian Mindset project. To see more insights on the project, stay tuned for upcoming announcements.]

Dr. Nnamani Silva’s story is a great example of how our barriers to success are so often mental. Even if she was feeling healthy, the fear of having an asthma attack kept her from testing her limits. However, seeing athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee compete at the Olympic level despite also having asthma broke down that mental barrier for her and inspired her to continue participating in sports, eventually leading her to an Olympic career in volleyball.  Inspired by the doctors who treated her asthma during childhood, she later decided to pursue a career in medicine as well.

Seeking out role models and community can be a great way to find this inspiration in your own life, in whatever you want to do, no matter how challenging it may seem. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut of identifying reasons why you can’t succeed instead of looking for reasons why you can. Finding others who have faced the same challenges as you and overcome them can shake you out of that mindset and motivate you achieve goals that you might not have thought possible at first.