Here is my reply to a question on LinkedIn about motivating professionals.

The more I thought about the question, the more it festered. Is it motivation, or is it manipulation? You decide.

How do you motivate your professional staff? …

How do you motivate a surgeon to perform an operation? How do you motivate an attorney to win a case?  How do you motivate an engineer to solve a problem or design an better product?

The answer – you don’t. Motivation comes from within. Unfortunately, much of what passes for as motivation is really manipulation.

So do you REALLY want to motivate professionals? Here are some thoughts based on almost 50 years as an engineering professional.

–FIRST, pay them what they are worth. Better yet, pay them a bit MORE than the going market.

— SECOND, consider company profit share rather than individual bonuses, which are too often political. After all, company profit is the “bottom line.”

–THIRD, provide good tools to do their jobs. This is an investment,not an expense.

–FOURTH, create a collegial work environment. See the comment on profit share versus individual bonuses.

–FIFTH, ask what you can do to help them, don’t tell them what to do.

Do this, and you’ll have all the motivation you need. And you’ll have motivated professionals flocking to your door wanting to join your organization.

OR, if you are a fellow professional, you can do what we did almost 30 years ago. When my business partner and I finally had enough management manipulation, we started our own professional engineering firm.

Our motivation is solving problems and/or improving things for our clients. That has been more than enough — and it has proven very profitable as well!

So if you too are weary of management manipulation, stick around and explore my blog. We’ll show you one way out by making your own JumpToConsulting.

P.S. Off to visit my good friend and business partner next week. Unfortunately, the chemo didn’t work and the cancer progresses.  But we both agree that we are so very glad we made our JumpToConsulting when we did. Carpe Diem!

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