Responsibility Is a Key Motivator. Not Money, Perks, or Other Incentives.

Responsibility -> Output -> Credibility -> Drive -> Responsibility

Source

It’s often believed that money is what motivates people to do things.

Well, in general, this statement is true but not really when the value of the output is what you’re looking for.

Money is the main incentive when a person has to make the Yes/No decision.

It’s also the initial decision that a person has to make to, e.g. join a company or establish one’s own (predicted revenue).

But, as things progress, money can only keep a worker to do the same or similar things over and over with the same level of care and engagement. And, in the long run, both of these features will plummet as this fix incentive won’t seem to be as enticing as it used to be initially.

In creative endeavors, let it be marketing, development, ideation, the value of the output is far more important than the output itself. In other words, you care if the task is done but your attention goes more towards the matter of the quality of that task.

The way to motivate a person for that value and quality is responsibility.

And it works for both job people and entrepreneurs/solo workers.

Responsibility is a key motivator that sort-of naturally pushes us to make the content of higher quality and value to the end-user.

What’s more, responsibility - as I’ll show in a second - is a self-powered feedback loop.

That’s because when you give a person more responsibility they’ll respond with higher care for their job which leads to better output.

So:

Responsibility -> Output

Then the better the output is the more credibility that person gets.

The quality of the content we produce will turn into a status factor that brings us more industry recognition and praise across colleagues and other experts.

After all, you can only create meaningful content when you take on more responsibility. Low-level tasks don’t get vast recognition.

It’s much better to say “look, see that app with 400,000 downloads? Yea, I made it” that “see that 300-word blog post? I made it. I mean, yea it brings like 20 views a month but whatever”.

So:

Responsibility -> Output -> Credibility

Credibility produces an additional drive that motivates us to chase even higher goals and do things with better care and quality.

Responsibility -> Output -> Credibility -> Drive

This drive pushes us forward to - exactly - take (even more) responsibility for the output and create things that are of value to the end-user.

Responsibility -> Output -> Credibility -> Drive -> Responsibility

And the cycle continues.

Whenever you want to create greater things give yourself more responsibility (or your employees).

Of course, it might happen that the person is not ready to take the stand and do their job but in these cases, they’ll either say no or it indicates that they were in the wrong place anyway.

Money is great, perks are great, company benefits are great.

But what keeps creative and talented people at their desks is their self-inflicted goal that can only be reflected in the level of responsibility and the output they create.