Business Owner Duties and Responsibilities

You probably noticed that people have various levels of motivation in respect to their work. While some work enthusiastically, others take a great deal of effort to get them started — even under the constant supervision of a superior. While some find their jobs interesting, others simply see their job as a harsh necessity of life. In the end, it comes down to motivation. In modern society, motivation can mean a person’s desire to work, the actions a manager performs to achieve results or, even, a company’s wage system. In a basic meaning, motivation is defined as an impulse that propels a person toward some activity. Motivation comes from the word motive, which means “an incentive, purpose, or reason for some action.” Motive, in turn, comes from the Latin word movēre, which means “to move.” Thus motivation is something that makes people move in some area of activity.

While managing different companies, I noticed that there are those who are dedicated to their jobs and those there for a free ride. The free riders are willing to go along for the ride as long as someone else does the driving. It is pretty easy to deal with the first type of person. They are loyal to the company and produce to the extent of their competence to produce good results. To put it simply, these are people you can rely on. If you need to solve an urgent problem, you call upon these individuals to obtain the needed support. L. Ron Hubbard provides a good deliniation of the different levels of motivation.[1] He describes four main levels of motivation, from the highest to the lowest:

• Duty
• Personal Conviction
• Personal Gain
• Money

Duty

Duty is the highest motivation level. On this level, people consider the company they work for to be part of their lives. They are loyal to the company and its interests. They are reliable and give support to the managers. There may be many people working for a company but rarely do the majority have the motivation level of “duty”.

Personal Conviction

Those with the motivation level of “personal conviction”, are the people who are not company patriots but consider themselves professionals. They try to do their jobs well and meet their personal standards of professionalism. For example, this could be an accountant who does not care what the company does or how well it succeeds, but by the virtue of personal conviction, thinks it is important to ensure that the accounting department is run properly.

Personal Gain

The next level of motivation is personal gain. People on this level do their jobs just to get certain benefits from the company. These benefits range from the intangible, such as experience, knowledge, and networking, to the tangible, such as the company’s convenient location or compensation. These people often tell you that they are ready to deliver fantastic results if you provide them with higher pay and better benefits. And they sometimes sound very convincing! If you’ve ever indulged one these please, then you know they don’t pan out. Their level of production does not increase in proportion to their appetite.

Money

The last level of motivation is money, and it is actually pretty rare to find a person at this level. At this level of motivation, a person does not even care what he does as long as he makes money doing it. Although many people say they are interested only in money, this is not actually true. Just try offering an engineer who constantly complains about being underpaid a better-paying job as sales manager. Normally, he will tell you that he would rather work in his field. This means that his level of motivation is not money, but personal conviction. People who are on the money level of motivation usually have some serious money troubles and are ready to do anything possible to solve them.

It should be noted that the higher levels of motivation are accompanied by the lower ones. Thus a person on the level of duty is also motivated by personal conviction, personal gain, and the money levels. The fact that he has a motivation level of duty does not mean he would not be interested in money — it’s simply not his first priority. Upon acting, he’ll always think of the company first and only after will he consider the reward. This is why you should be careful not to stigmatize somebody who asks for a raise. A raise request does not necessarily mean that money is the person’s main motivation. In order to determine the person’s true motivation, you should look at what drives him when he does his job, not concentrate on whether he asks for more money.

In the middle of this incentive scale, one can arbitrarily draw a line between the personal conviction and personal gain levels. Above this line are people who try to do their jobs well because of their own personal desire. They are the most dedicated to their jobs. Below the line are people who, upon receiving their position in the company, focus not on how to get the job done, but on what they need to do, if anything, to receive their desired benefits. It is pretty easy to manage the two types above the arbitrary line, as they are focused on getting the job done. It is more difficult to manage the two types below the line because you have to deal with their constant calculations regarding their personal gain. When it comes to salaries, different approaches are required here. Any fair pay system suits people with a high motivation level, as they work without thinking about money. For people with a low motivation level, the pay system should be such that it encourages and rewards every correct action and penalizes every wrong one.

Interestingly, people have different levels of motivation in different areas of their lives. For example, there are many who have a duty level of motivation toward their family, and a personal gain level toward their job. You hire such a person and think, If he is so proud of his kids and takes such good care of his family, he will definitely be a good employee! However, there isn’t a connection between the two. I have met several fathers who were loyal to their families but who could not be forced to work within an inch of their lives. This becomes clear when you understand how to gauge a person’s level of motivation correctly.

Consider a very large group, such as the population of a country. If you traced how the average level of motivation of the Soviet people changed over time, you would find that the highest increase in motivation was during and right after World War II. According to statistics, during the war, it was unusual for soldiers to get sick from common diseases, even though the living conditions were deplorable. The highest level of patriotism was also during and immediately following the war. The lowest level of motivation was right after the collapse of the USSR. The reason for this was the motivation itself. If a person accepts the goals of a group as his own, he is at the level of duty. The goals of the country during and after the war were clear and important to the majority of the people. Due to explicit threats and efficient propaganda, almost everyone understood that there was a simple goal during the war: to defeat the enemy; after the war, it was to restore the economy. After the collapse of the USSR, all the goals that the ruling party had directed people toward for decades through the use of propaganda were destroyed, but new ones had not yet been established. This is why the country experienced a period of the lowest motivation in the entire history of the Soviet Union. The country was effectively pulled to pieces. Do not think that I sympathize with the Communists. I do not. However, their use of management tools—namely, setting goals, then skillfully and persistently promoting those goals of unifying the Soviet Union in the face of mortal threat—has to be commended. During Soviet times, goal-oriented propaganda penetrated so deeply into all aspects of society that even a university thesis on mechanical engineering could not be successfully defended without discussing the role of the next Party Congress in the manufacturing of hubs and cogwheels.

Perhaps this is the biggest secret of leadership: In order to create and support high levels of motivation, it is necessary for people to share the goals of the group. If the leader is skilled enough to form and promote goals, he will be surrounded by people with high levels of motivation. Promotion of goals is the most important tool for creating high levels of motivation, and goal promotion plays an important role in groups with the highest levels of motivation. Goal promotion is a set of actions that conveys to a group some ideas in order to form a particular point of view.

If you observe, you will find that there are companies where people work with enthusiasm, and there are companies where all the employees remain on no more than the personal gain level of motivation. Most commonly, within a company, there is a small group of highly motivated people, and then there are the rest. As a rule, this small group consists of people who have been working side by side with the leader for a long time. Perhaps these are the people who have worked for the company since it first started. However, the newer employees tend not to have this motivation. The reason for this is that when the company first started, the owner attracted people who shared his goals and intentions and agreed with his vision of the future. He was likely low on funds, and intuitively relied on the most powerful of tools: goals. As time passed, the company learned to produce a product and make money, and goal promotion was replaced with “solid” incentives such as salaries, stability, and career-advancement opportunities. The most important tool for establishing motivation was abandoned and forgotten. Moreover, the company grew relatively large, and personal communication with the owner became available only to those who were within his inner circle in the company.

It is important to realize that the promotion of goals and ideals should be pursued continuously from the moment a company is established. If the owner in the above example had continued promoting goals and purposes and informing each employee about them even after the company grew large, then the number of people with a high level of motivation would have increased proportionally with the company’s growth. When one hires people, the most important thing one wants from them is their creative energy, not just their muscle power or obedience in following orders and policies. In order for that to happen, it is important to raise their level of motivation. It is obvious that when a new employee joins a company, he is either functioning on the personal conviction or personal gain level. In order to raise his level of motivation to duty, it is important for the leader to fulfill his mission and inspire an employee with the goals of the group.

In modern society, the idea that it is important to provide people with goals that are clear and relevant to them in order to motivate them is very popular. One popular idea is that if you want to motivate a person who wants to build a house or buy a car, you must show him that the goals of the company are related to his personal goals. In my opinion, this is a vulgar and a completely useless idea. Such ideas are furthered by those who consider adaptation the only means of survival. However, strong groups do not adapt. Strong leaders do not conform. They adjust the environment to fit their goals. Whom did Steve Jobs conform to when he invited only the best computer geeks to join his team? No one. He simply promoted the goals of the company to the finest computer specialists, then provided them with the opportunity to create outstanding products and work in an atmosphere with the most talented people. That is why the best engineers and developers joined his company. In spite of his bad temper, they were ready to work eighty hours a week to create outstanding products. A leader cannot increase a person’s motivation by trying to adapt to his or her personal goals.

Some people are readily inspired by the goals of a group, while others never progress higher than the personal gain level of motivation. During one of my workshops on motivation, someone offered up the following idea: Top management has the highest level of motivation, middle management has an average level of motivation, and ordinary employees have a low level of motivation. What an outrageous idea! I have seen a lot of “ordinary” employees who were at the duty level of motivation, and top executives whose level of motivation wasn’t any higher than the personal gain level. As I listened to this person speak, I thought of my parents, both highly qualified workers. When they were young, they often had friends over for dinner, and I, while still a little boy, listened with pleasure to what the adults were discussing at the table. During these dinners, the conversation inevitably turned from local and personal matters to industrial ones; my mother and father really liked and enjoyed their jobs. I don’t know whether they had a duty level of motivation, but at the very least they had a personal conviction level.

If you ask the average person about his or her personal goals and what he or she wants to achieve in life, you will discover a terrible truth. Most of them do not have any personal goals. They lost their dreams and aspirations a long time ago. One has to admit that it is crazy that a person of approximately forty years of age would not be able to answer a question about what he wants to achieve in life. Incidentally, most of them will not want to talk to you at all. They will feel uncomfortable discussing the subject of their personal goals. Do you know why? Because deep in their hearts they know that this lack of personal goals makes their life pointless. When you ask them questions about their personal goals, they briefly consider the subject and see a frightening abyss. That is why they will talk to you about anything trivial—sports, politics, or the weather, but not about their personal goals. It is too scary and painful to do so.

How have people sunk to this state? I believe it is due to rejection and disappointment. This process begins in childhood. A child says he wants to become a fireman and ride a big red truck, and his horrified parents heatedly tell him that he needs to become a lawyer like his mother or father. He wants a huge teddy bear, but he is emphatically told that he cannot have one due to some strange reason known only to them. If you look at a child’s life, you will see it is far from easy. He is completely dependent on the will of those around him. He cannot have anything without the approval and assistance of adults. There is almost nothing he can do other than what is suggested by his parents. In many families and schools, a child learns that he cannot achieve anything and that there is something wrong with his goals. Have you ever tried very hard to get something, only to find every door slammed in your face? What emotions did you experience in that moment? If you’re like most people, you felt mental anguish and disappointment. If, in a person’s life, there are too many moments when his aspirations caused him mental anguish, sooner or later he will try to avoid this pain by refusing to think about his personal goals.

In 1993, I worked for the Time Manager International Company, which provided training on improving personal effectiveness. One of the training components was setting up personal goals for the next twenty years and beyond. When I first began to think about my particular goals, I felt as if I had a concrete slab on my shoulders. Back then, I thought it was normal to feel this way when pondering goals. Nonetheless, I continued planning and setting goals for a few years ahead, and eventually it became easier and easier for me. It is a bit like a fear of heights. One day when I was a kid, my friends and I decided to climb up a fire tower. When we reached the top, I was so afraid that I could not even stand up. I was on all fours, breathless with fear. At that moment, I did not know that going back down was going to be even worse! But after climbing this tower a few more times, I started feeling more confident. Eventually, I could stand and begin to notice the beautiful surroundings and enjoy the vast space around me. It is the same with goals. When you first start to plan your own life, the initial steps don’t bring you any enjoyment. They are difficult to make, but you’ll find that the longer you work at it, the more enjoyment it brings.

When you deal with people, you should understand that the majority of them are like scared children and cannot look at their future. If you force them to look, it is so unbearable to some that they would prefer to attack you and your ideas, anything not to think about the future. This should not stop you, of course. You should just draw their attention to the company’s goals. Continue to do it, and sooner or later they will begin to accept the company’s goals, although they may be resistant in the very beginning.

In essence, a person gets to the duty level of motivation in working for a company only when he shares the main goals of that company. It is simple and complex at the same time. It is simple because all you need to do is promote these goals to every employee of the company. It is complex because it takes time and there are obstacles that you will need to overcome.

Another false idea with regard to goals is that in order to have a high level of motivation, people first need to satisfy their basic needs. For example, in order for people to have a desire to do any kind of creative work, they first need to be well fed, feel safe, et cetera. This is complete nonsense. Look at people who are truly passionate about what they do. They very often do not care at all about food and living conditions. Just think of examples of people who have given up their health and their lives in order to achieve their goals. Take business owners, many of whom started their businesses during very uncertain times. They risked a great deal, spent all of their time at work, invested all of their money, and even borrowed money to invest, putting themselves and their families at risk. Only an individual who has never taken on any significant goals would say that in order to be inspired to achieve them, he has to have his basic needs satisfied first. Never swallow this bait. The employees of your company can accept and support the company’s goals no matter what their salary is or what level of material well-being the company provides at the time.

The adoption of these false ideas about creating motivation leads to the illusion that there exists a vicious cycle with regard to motivation. Someone might say, “In order for personnel to have a high level of motivation, it is important to pay them well. In order to be able to pay them well, you need high revenues. It is only possible to have high revenues when people work with a high level of dedication, but a high level of motivation is required to work with a high level of dedication.” This is a vicious cycle, but is only an illusion, as it is not necessary to have high revenues to increase your employees’ level of motivation. You simply need to inspire them with lofty goals. I am not claiming, however, that money does not have any influence on motivation.

The level of a person’s motivation depends on where that person’s attention is directed. You know very well that when your attention is focused on something you find very interesting, you do not even see or hear what is happening around you. When you are fascinated by an interesting book, movie, or your favorite hobby, even if cannons fired around, you would pay no attention to them. Time stops and other things no longer exist for you. When a person is really engrossed in something, she could even get injured and not even notice. If a person’s attention is focused on shared goals, she will be fascinated and feel a sense of duty. If the goals are not realistic to her, she cannot concentrate on them. Instead, she will be focused on her own principles, and her level of motivation will be that of personal conviction. If even her own principles are not real to her but only the benefits she needs are, she will operate on a personal gain level of motivation. The better you can focus a person’s attention on the company’s goals, the higher the level of motivation will be.

Do not forget that life does not consist of work alone. People move along the streets and see advertisements that urge them to buy things, reminding them of the necessity of making money. They return home and their family members also remind them of the necessity of making money. They meet with friends, who also tell them about the necessity of money. So while you are focusing people’s attention on the company’s goals, there are a lot of other things in their lives that focus their attention on money and personal gain. That is why the worse the compensation situation is, the more difficult it is for a leader to perform his duty to focus an employee’s attention on the company’s goals. The more problems at home a person has, the more frequently you have to remind him of these goals. It can also be noted that while money issues and problems at home can really lower a person’s motivation, a high salary and good benefits on their own will never be able to increase it. That is why you cannot simply discuss goals one time, inspire your employees, and then relax. The attention you have focused on the company’s goals will quickly be refocused on money and benefits if you do not constantly redirect it back to the chosen goals of the organization.

[1] L. Ron Hubbard “Promotion and Motivation”, in The Organization Executive Course: Public Division, vol. 6 (Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1991), 158.