I gave you the conditions — now get to work.

There is an opinion that a good “human resource” wants to work on their own and will do so if you just provide the conditions for work—salary, a computer, a desk, and a restroom. The role of a manager is seen as giving instructions, shouting “let’s go,” “cracking the whip,” organizing procedures, distributing punishments, forcing people to work, setting tasks, and monitoring their completion. No one should be a babysitter. If you want to work—here, work.Arbeit macht frei!If you don’t want to be here, then get out! If you don’t share the company’s goals, the goals set by the owner, then you don’t belong in this company.Jedem das Seine!

Feelings style. When you ask a person, usually a business owner, if there are many magically motivated people out there, he sighs and says—in our countryalmost none. I’ll let you in on a secret — there are almost none in the whole world. And isn’t it absurd to build your business based on something that…almost none?.

And then, once the geographical qualification has been swallowed, I will say that there is no such thing at all. There are no people who will plough away harder and better, like idiots, without any motive. If somebody at your workplace suddenly does work like that, all on his own, it means you have accidentally touched some secret string in his soul, that here and now this person has tied his own success to the company’s success and is therefore full of enthusiasm. But this, like any infatuation, passes quickly, and we are back with the “ordinary human material.”

There’s another option. Look at the garden. What you need grows and yields a harvest only if you take care of it, nurture it, and believe in it. On the other hand, what grows on its own is usually a weed. The person who works with unmotivated enthusiasm is likely taking something from your company, but you probably don’t know what exactly, and they probably don’t want you to find out.

So, perhaps we should understand that a manager’s job is not just to “create conditions,” but to actually find a person’s motivations and align them with the company’s goals. Only then will we have those fantastic individuals who “work on their own.”
*This immediately brings to mind the film “ Mission Cleopatra “There, the free hired builders (not slaves) were parodied, showing how overseers whipped them to make them work harder. It was just the way things were done.”