Our Philosophy

There is an old joke that goes something like this:

A policeman sees a drunken man searching for something under a streetlight. He goes to the man and asks:

“Is there something that you lost sir?”

The drunken man replies, “Yeaash. I sheem to have… *hick*… lost my keys”

The policeman replies, “I can help you look for them.”

So they both start searching under the streetlight, for 10 minutes with no luck. The frustrated policeman asks:

“Are you sure you’ve lost the keys around here mate?”

To which the drunk man replies, “Well… *hick*… no, the keys are inside the house…”

“So why are we looking out here?!”, the policeman cries.

To which the drunk man says, ““It’s dark inside the house! *hick*… The light’s much better here!”

* * *

If you’ve heard this joke before, that’s understandable. This joke is actually hundreds of years old – the Sufi’s were some of the very first to tell it….

It’s funny, and it has ever since been often stated, because it beautifully illustrates a bias that we’ve long had as human beings – that we prefer to look where it’s easiest to look, (and precisely where the ‘keys’ are not).

This is especially relevant if we would but honestly assess the world of motivation research and leadership education on offer today.

The Illusion of Surface-Level Understanding

For much of this content has been created by ‘surface-level theorists’, who likewise are trained to look where it’s easiest to look – that is, where it is easiest to measure – as to then write academic papers and PhDs. (After all, who can argue with mathematical equations and statistical data of easy to measure things?)

It’s in the inherent nature of the scientific method to always favour things ‘well lit’, (i.e. what’s easily measured and quantifiable) – like behaviours, responses, and observable actions – and to actively avoid the deeper currents of human motivation like core desires, unconscious drives, intrinsic values… and above all, the true ‘why’ behind human behaviour.

Why? Because these are not easily measured. And if you go down that path, you may not even get a PhD, which means you may not even be considered an academic, an expert and so on…

The incentive structure is heavily incentivised to stay on the surface and be superficial.

As such, consider how most organizations approach motivation today: they conduct engagement surveys, deploy incentive programs, and track superficial KPIs. But as Daniel Pink revealed in his ground-breaking research, these extrinsic motivators often produce the opposite of their intended effect. In his studies, higher monetary incentives actually led to worse performance on creative tasks. Why? Because the true motivational drivers—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—lay hidden in the shadows, unaddressed by traditional approaches.

As such, the majority of motivation programs on offer today are grounded in what appears to be ‘scientific thinking’, which only hack at the leaves of the problem, rather than striking at the root.

For instance, one common expression of this is the development of lists of motivational techniques (as tabulated and measured in consumer behaviour studies), that one is then meant to apply. The proliferation of ‘motivational frameworks’ for instance, is an example of such a development.

The idea is that if one would but adopt these same observable techniques, and put these ways of measurable good behaviours into practice – then one would also realize those same outcomes that these successful motivators also had.

So, a great premium is placed upon how did former marketers present, how did they communicate, how did they structure incentives, how did they create campaigns… and so on.

And so with all this ‘objective knowledge’ about motivation, with all these certificates, diplomas, degrees, master degrees and PhDs – one would now think that we would be drowning in all kinds of great motivational leaders all around us.

So why is it that today, public opinion, (as well as first-hand experience), tells the exact opposite story?

Beyond the Facade: The Search for Authentic Motivation

Well, that’s because to copy someone else’s motivational techniques – or for that matter, to enhance an existing pre-disposition of a style – produces little more than a ‘facade’ of understanding motivation, and not the real depth required.

‘Facade’, a powerful concept similar to Jung’s ‘persona’, essentially means that one fakes the appearance of understanding. It is a mask comprised of collective techniques, and projects nothing real of its own deep insight or authentic understanding. To adapt Jung’s wisdom:

“[The facade] is a compromise between individual and society as to what motivation should appear to be. It takes a form, earns attention, exercises a function, it is this or that. … The approach concerned is only a secondary reality, a compromise formation, in making which others often have a greater share than the practitioner. The facade is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality, to give it a nickname.”

But great motivational leaders are never two dimensional. Whenever we think of truly great motivation experts – like with a Daniel Kahneman, a Robert Cialdini, a Carol Dweck – these people evoke something altogether more dimension than even we are. They radiate as to be almost ‘four dimensional’, and this is precisely why so many followed their insights.

Take Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset. Her breakthrough wasn’t just observing that some people believe abilities can be developed (growth mindset) while others believe they’re fixed (fixed mindset). The power of her research came from diving deep into the neurological and psychological substrates underlying these mindsets—revealing how our very relationship with failure, effort, and challenge stems from fundamental beliefs about human potential. When organizations implement “growth mindset programs” without this deeper understanding, they create what Dweck herself calls “false growth mindset”—a facade rather than transformation.

There’s nothing copied in true motivational understanding. Each great motivational expert has their own unique understanding as it were.

After all, think of the very best motivation specialists throughout history – the ones that most inspire you the most…

What names came to your mind? What are they like? Can you picture them? Just think for a moment please.

Now consider – were any of these motivation experts the product of the ‘scientific management and superficial motivation’ training that’s on offer today?

No? I rest my case.

The Fatal Flaw

The fatal flaw at the heart of all of this, is one issue that psychology long recognized:

There is a world of difference between the observable behaviors or actions, which is the domain of surface science || and the world of deep motivations and intrinsic drivers, which is the domain of depth psychology or motivation research.

Understanding motivation primarily belongs in the latter category, and not the former. Motivation research is first and foremost a deep art.

Naturally a good motivation researcher needs to be aware of the observable behaviors and think scientifically about these, but motivation itself is concerned with the inner drivers or impulses that compel action – as the researcher recognizes, along with the individuals or groups they influence.

The Methodologies of Deep Motivation Research

How then do we access these hidden realms of motivation? The Center for Motivation Research pioneered several methodologies that remain powerful today:

1. Depth Interviews: Unlike structured surveys, these free-flowing conversations allow skilled interviewers to follow emotional threads, using techniques like word association, dream analysis, and symbolic interpretation to reveal unconscious drivers.
2. Projective Techniques: Tools like the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), where subjects create stories about ambiguous images, bypass conscious defenses to reveal underlying motivational patterns.
3. Metaphor Elicitation: Developed by Gerald Zaltman at Harvard, this technique asks participants to collect images representing their thoughts and feelings about a topic, revealing deeply held but difficult-to-articulate motivations.
4. Ethnographic Immersion: Extended observation in natural settings reveals the gap between what people say motivates them and what actually drives their behavior.
5. Psychophysiological Measures: Modern tools like fMRI, eye-tracking, and galvanic skin response measurements provide windows into motivational processes occurring below conscious awareness.

This insight of ‘compel’ does not emerge from the material data or the behaviors themselves. There’s nothing there to truly ‘understand’. The ‘compel’, emerges from the hidden, subjective pursuit of desires – in what the individual recognizes to be significant, and what he or she then is driven by.

The process of understanding motivation is a process of psychological depth recognition. While surface science is able to categorize properties of behaviors and then to develop practical applications from it – this later aspect in itself is a function of the story we tell ourselves about why people do what they do.

For example, Abraham Maslow as a psychologist discovered that human needs follow a hierarchy, with self-actualization at the top. It was then the leadership of motivation researchers like Ernest Dichter that took this idea, as to then build the first true motivational research techniques through the story he told others about its potential.

Dichter’s breakthrough came when studying Betty Crocker cake mixes in the 1950s. Sales were disappointing despite convenience and quality. Through depth interviews, Dichter discovered that housewives felt guilty using a mix that required only adding water—it felt like cheating, not “real” baking. The solution? Requiring the addition of a fresh egg, which made women feel they were contributing something personal and meaningful. Sales skyrocketed, not because of a better product, but because Dichter understood the deeper motivational currents of pride, contribution, and nurturance that surface-level market research had missed entirely.

It was then the leadership of marketing pioneers that made the decision to use these insights in how products were positioned to consumers, after traditional market researchers themselves rejected the depth approach.

And on and on…

Great motivation research uses both modes of interpretation – the world of observable behaviors and deep drivers – as to get a most comprehensive picture of the situation. Both are necessary, and pitting one against the other is a demonstration of failure to understand first principles – i.e. that what we can see and what truly drives us, that these two perspectives are poles apart.

Bridging Modern Technology and Deep Understanding

This isn’t to say that modern data analytics and behavioral science can’t enhance our understanding of motivation. In fact, the most powerful approaches today combine depth psychology with cutting-edge technology:

• Netflix’s recommendation algorithm is powerful not just because it tracks viewing patterns, but because it was designed based on deep motivational principles about how people discover content, form identities through consumption, and seek emotional satisfaction.
• Apple’s product design succeeds because Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs understood that technology adoption isn’t just about features but about deeper human needs for beauty, simplicity, and status signaling.
• Zappos became a customer service legend not by optimizing call metrics but by understanding the deeper emotional need for trust and connection in online shopping experiences.

But the essence of motivation research is about the recognition that our outcomes first begin in the subjective realm, in what comes to be desired ahead of another.

The purchase of a product did not merely emerge out of superficial persuasion techniques, as if these things had a mind of their own. It began from a deep desire in the consumer’s mind (through their valuing certain outcomes and finding meaning therein), to ultimately, the action of reaching for their wallet (through their deep value structure).

Why throughout time, the great motivation researchers sought depth interviews, is because it is through these interactions one comes to find optimal understanding – what truly drives people – i.e. one discovers the most optimal schema of interpretation, that can guide the optimal connection and optimal action.

Here is for instance 3 principles from Ernest Dichter – a man who is culturally held by many as the father of motivation research – who states this same truth in different forms:

“The consumer is not as rational as they appear; they are driven by unconscious motives.”

“Products succeed because they connect with deep emotional needs; don’t market without understanding these deeper drives.”

“Where there is no deep understanding, the marketing falls flat; but in the multitude of motivational insights there is success.”

As such, there is a fatal flaw whenever one tries to derive ‘the keys of motivation’ from mere statistical probability of crunched data, as to what makes for effective motivation.

It’s no surprise then that the majority of today’s motivational programs that are systemically grounded in easy to measure assessments, in empirical theoretical frameworks – in reality, these address none of the deep-seated motivations that leaders actually need to understand.

The real problem of motivation research is in how to recognize with clarity the optimal hierarchy of desires, in how do we connect with the optimal drivers, and how do we practically engage with these motivations.

The Classic Case of Robert McNamara

A classic example of this flaw in motivational thinking came from Robert McNamara – the US Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War.

Previously McNamara served as the leader of Ford Motor Company, where he was very good at scientifically managing all things, as ‘things’. His understanding of motivation was grounded in the excellent management of the ‘conveyor belt’ on an assembly line, and coordinating the movements of complex mechanical parts.

When appointed as the leader of the war effort against the Communist problem in Vietnam, he decided to place the same scientific quantitative measures like he placed at the Ford powerplant.

McNamara thought to treat human motivation like a maths or engineering problem, because like the saying goes, ‘he who is good with a hammer, thinks that everything’s a nail’.

So he restructured the military complex, in line with the factory assembly line. As a scientific manager, ‘IN’ went in things that were easily measurable and quantifiable, like enemy kills numbers. And ‘OUT’ went all the hard to measure qualities and hard to measure things like the motivations or the aspirations of the rural Vietnamese folk.

McNamara’s approach epitomizes what organizational psychologist Chris Argyris called “single-loop learning”—focusing on how to achieve goals without questioning whether they’re the right goals or whether the motivational assumptions behind them are valid. The Viet Cong, meanwhile, operated with “double-loop learning”—constantly questioning assumptions and adapting strategies based on deeper motivational insights about both their own forces and their American opponents.

And what was the end result?

Well ultimately, it resulted not just in the defeat of the US militarily in the 1970s. For ever since the Vietnam War, culture itself has fundamentally shifted as a result.

Modern Examples of Motivational Understanding

The contrast between superficial and deep motivational understanding plays out daily in our organizations:

• Tesla didn’t succeed by simply measuring car features or performance metrics. Elon Musk tapped into deeper motivational currents around environmental identity, status signaling, and technological pioneering that traditional automakers missed entirely.
• Southwest Airlines maintains industry-leading employee engagement not through superficial perks but by understanding the deeper motivational need for purpose and pride that drives frontline service workers.
• Wikipedia created one of humanity’s greatest knowledge repositories not by paying contributors but by understanding the deep motivational power of mastery, autonomy, and purpose that drives voluntary participation.

Culturally, ever since we live in a very cynical time about all the motivational approaches that surrounds us. There are poor examples of motivation understanding on display – from the highest levels of political office, to the many Fortune 500 companies that spectacularly collapsed due to the weight of sheer misunderstanding of human motivation – i.e. from the energy company Enron, to the behemoth investment bank Lehman Brothers, to the mega start-up Theranos, to the crypto exchange media darling, FTX…

Worse than cynicism still, many see no way out of this mess. For there’s also a cultural ‘learned helplessness’ at play that undermines any attempt to even change it.

But I propose that much of what’s present today has been in no small part, due to this kind of superficial motivation understanding that most leaders today get.

When motivational ethos mirrors the Machiavellian mindset that states that, ‘there’s no reality, only perception’; or that ‘incentives’ are merely that which is expedient; or the ‘learned superficiality’ found in most academic centers which affirm human motivation as nothing more than ‘a series of stimulus-response patterns, full of sound of fury, signifying nothing’…

How can motivation research that emerges from these ideas, be little more than pretenses?

Today’s motivation researcher is in a very precarious position. Most do not have a rock-solid foundation for what drives people and what gives life genuine impulse. We have lost touch with the principles that tell us what deep human motivation is all about.

As such, motivation research lacks conviction amidst a culture that’s rife with cynicism. When the last ‘motivational technique of the month’ created little more than cosmetic changes, we set our sights lower and just go through the motions of ‘the corporate thing to do’…