Primed to Perform audiobook

I reserve the 5 star rating for books that change the way I think or expose me to a new way of doing things I didn't know before. This is one of those books. It is applied mostly to the world of business, but it can apply to anything you do and why you do it.Primed to Perform tries to demystify culture and put it in a measurable structure so you can take action to steer your company culture for the highest performance possible. This is typically the realm of fuzzy 'feel good' consultants where you do some team building exercises and hope that will make everyone play nice together. Primed to Perform is so much more than that. Neel Doshi has done his research, stood on the shoulders of his predecessors and made a book that can give you a real plan on how to identify what is motivating and what is demotivating by classifying motivations into one of six categories. Three are empowering, play, purpose, and potential. Three are demotivating, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. Primed to Perform challenges the pay for performance paradigm that is pervasive in most companies. It's not that we don't want to pay for high performers, but when that is the only incentive it can backfire. Performance in many cases drops when money is the only thing motivating people. Examine your own motivations. If you are doing something only for the money, is your heart really in it? Do you do your best work? You might make the cash, but your actual impact is only as high as it needs to be to make the dollars.When the reward of the work is the work itself, then you are in a state of play. How is your performance when your work is fun? What about when you help others and see them succeed? What about when your work is part of a larger purpose to make a difference in the world? Those are the real motivators of the human soul and true keys to fulfillment.Instead of measuring our 'success' which is generally tied to financial metrics, let's measure our fulfillment which comes from our play, purpose to something greater than ourselves, and potential to grow and become more capable. Building an organization that can tap into those human desires is one that will flourish and drive impact. This isn't just feel good pontification either. Primed to Perform builds on case studies from GM, Toyota, Microsoft, and many others where organizations were measurably improved in terms of real economic output by shifting the culture to one that is focused on these core beliefs. Focusing on the dollars puts the emotion second and creates a red ocean culture of competition. Focusing on the play and purpose creates a blue ocean society where the actual output of dollars increases because the effectiveness of each participant is higher.Whether you are examining your own motivations for what you do and why you do it, or you are part of a team, or building a team, this book will give you a blueprint for designing a happier more productive culture.

Fantastic book. One of the very best I've read on building a great workplace culture. Much to think about and implement!

For a long time, I wondered why my subordinates were not as much enthusiastic than I was.I already knew that intrinsic motivation was a powerful source of motivation.In fact, I also knew the different components that are needed to improve motivation, thanks to books like "Drive" by Dan Pink and the "Self-Determination Theory", coined by Deci and Ryan in 1985.However, I had difficulties to instill this mindset to my team, and also my colleagues.This book showed me the way.It gave me an effective and practical tool to measure intrinsic motivation (the Total Motivation indice).Introduced me to the concept of Organizational Complexity, which is an incredible tool to understand the organization in a more systematic way.Made me understand the link between agility and motivation.Also, the book is full of references to scientific research.And the authors have done their own research, proving that Total Motivation is a precious tool to increase engagement which leads to dramatic improvements in performance.It showed me that there are vast untapped sources of performance in organizations.Today, I feel really grateful to having discovered this wonderful book.It challenged my conception of effective organizations.And even lead me to research on new models of organizations, like Teal and Holacracy.

Oh this book sparked so many great ideas and helpful thoughts.I loved the first part enough to give it a 6 star rating so even though the second part, to me, was weaker it's still a slam dunk!The best thing to me was the simplicity yet depth of the ToMo model. I love how I can look at things and go "yeah, that's why they're performing so well and they're not..." and feel like I have a tool to deal with it (save the performing group from stupid decisions and help the weaker group change).Easily on my top 10 all time non-fiction, possibly even top 5!

Very interesting reading tapping from different sources to study motivation at work: self-determination theory, complex-adaptive systems, transformational leadership, ... The authors suggest their "product", ToMo, Total Motivation, and a recipe to achieve it in your organisation discussing things like job definition and careers model.That latter part was the one disappointing to me. But a good read, in any case.

I would give this book 6 stars if I could! A must read for any CEO or team lead who is serious about revamping the corporate’s or the team’s culture. The book explains the abstract concepts and also gives specific examples - a lot of the case studies resonated with me, as I have seen them play out in real life. Definitely came to appreciate the concepts in this book more only after working for a long time; they may not be as obvious to a fresh graduate.

This is my new favorite book on shaping culture. I have reread it three times in the past two months. I love the weaving of many classic business models into a theory of Total Motivation that is measurable. In addition to great stories of high functioning teams, it offers data to correlate steps to take to amp up play, purpose and potential as motivators. I am recommending this to anyone who is trying to create high functioning teams and organizations.

Doshi and McGregor put data and science behind something we've long known intuitively to be true...we perform at our very best when love the work we do. Additionally, I find their work to be very insightful in highlighting the deep, potentially unconscious, blame bias we have towards others. In life - whether that be in a social, religious or work setting - our tendency is to blame people rather than external factors. This book identifies the myriad of external factors that impact people's behavior and performance and shows the criticality of aligning those things towards a positively impactful outcome. Very enlightening!

Some interesting ideas. Working with agile/scrum in software industry, I recognized a lot of the ideas. Autonomy, democratic decision-making, experimentation and play are second-nature on well-managed team. This book was sent to me by a director for whom they might be more novel concepts. The problem: I don't think they ever read the book. Either that, or they read it and thought, "Oh yeah, we totally do that." Which is I suppose a major problem with books like this. They are hand-wavey enough to make executives and managers think they can pull this off. What you end up with is a new rhetoric for the old top-down status quo.How many corporations out there have "fire watchers"? How many, if they do, end up turning that position into "clock watcher"?

Play, Purpose, Potential vs Emotional, Economic, & Inertial motivators. How to inspire organizations to perform in the top percentile of their competitors. The authors touch on Flow, Grit, Mindset and so many more in their own words. An excellent read. So much of what's in here speaks to the heart of what business psychology had been preaching for years. The keys to the castle written out, complete with checklists, resources, and questionnaires. I especially appreciated "The Scientist's Toothbrush" at the end of the book crediting all the previous researchers who had published findings on the same science by different titles. Absolutely phenomenal scientific lit review too. I absolutely loved this one.

Really liked this..aside from the missing pointers in the right direction.It was a lot of "this thing doesn't work! watch out for it!...but we're not sure what exactly does. different strokes for different folks kinda thing"tomocobra farmsweight regain from goldindirect/ direct motivation

I liked the mental model of motivation this book gives in the first few chapters. It's a slightly different angle than what's given in Dan Pink's Drive. The book does a good job of delivering the material breadth-first: if it starts to get boring, you can stop reading it without any fear of missing something later on.

Primed to perform totally crushed my imaginary leadership capabilities I thought I had and many pieces comes together over the last 10 years in corporate life understanding why I’m unhappy in some but ecstatic in other. It changed my mindset in dealing with management of people within 300 pages with complex scientific findings broken down into terms that people like me can understand.

First part was amazing. I think this book single-handedly changed my view on how to optimize one's motivation. Good mix of research and legitimized anecdotesOnce it got through the framework, I became bored rapidly though. Didn't finish

A must read. Highly recommend to anyone looking to understand how to build a strong adaptive team and the culture to support them. That said, it’s not a very easy read - lots of concepts introduced at breakneck speed and writing style is tedious at times - but more good than bad hence 4/5.