If you're a manager, you have to motivate everyone, every day,
every way that you can. You have to take into account just who
those people are, what they are supposed to do, how they are paid,
and with whom they have to work, to mention just a few of the
things that motivate all of us. There is no motivational technique,
simple or otherwise, that works with everyone. People are just too
various for that, not to mention just too ornery.

In the real world, motivation is the art of creating conditions that
allow every one of us, warts and all, to get his work done at his own
peak level of efficiency. Individuals, companies, and countries that
can do that consistently acquire enormous advantages over their
competitors. The main purpose of this book is to deliver those
advantages directly into your hands.

This introductory chapter has two purposes. The first is to draw
a clear distinction between real motivation and four familiar, but
oversold, imitations. The second is to preview what you can expect
to find in each of the eighteen chapters that follow this one.

In everyday language, motivation can mean anything from bal-
lyhoo to bribery. In fact, there are four common misuses for that
much-abused word: (1) pumping up enthusiasm; (2) making peo-
ple happy (or at least, less likely to complain); (3) a few easily
memorized formulas that allegedly make people either more rea-
sonable or less ornery; or (4) plain old bribery.

The first three of those "definitions" are much too unrealistic to
be useful. To prevent them from cluttering up our thinking, we'll
demolish them right now. As for the fourth, we'll only touch on it
here. That's because money is so much more complicated than it
seems that we'll have to devote all of chapter 10 to it.

Now, for a brief, but hard, look at each of those bogus versions
of motivation.

Have you ever heard a "motivational" speaker working a group
of people into a state of cheering, yelling, arm-waving hysteria?
The really good ones brim over with self-confidence as they assure

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