Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation

The revolutionary book that teaches you how to use the cutting edge of human psychology to build high performing workplace cultures.

Too often, great cultures feel like magic. While most leaders believe culture is critical to success, few know how to build a strong company culture, or sustain it over time.

What if you knew the science behind the magic—a science so predictive and powerful that you could transform your organization? What if you could use cutting-edge organizational psychology to improve employee motivation and unlock people’s innate desire to innovate, experiment, and adapt? In Primed to Perform, Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show you how to do just that. The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate, high-performing employees.

This business management guide explains the counter-intuitive science behind great cultures, building on over a century of academic thinking. It shares the simple, highly predictive new measurement tool—the Total Motivation (ToMo) Factor—that enables you to measure the strength of your culture, and track improvements over time. It explores the authors’ original research into how Total Motivation leads to higher performance in iconic companies, from Apple to Starbucks to Southwest Airlines. Most importantly, it teaches you to build great cultures and boost workplace performance, using a systematic and sustainable approach.

High performing cultures can’t be left to chance. Organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you’re a five-person team or a startup, a school, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.

Drawing on original research and cutting-edge science, this book provides a complete toolkit for leaders:

• The Science of Total Motivation: Go beyond traditional incentives and discover the six motives that truly drive effort. Learn to shift your team toward the play, purpose, and potential that fuels breakthrough results.
• The ToMo Factor: Leverage a simple, predictive tool to measure the strength of your culture, diagnose problems, and track improvements in employee engagement over time.
• Tactical vs. Adaptive Performance: Master the crucial balance between executing today’s plan (tactical) and innovating for tomorrow (adaptive) to ensure long-term success.
• A Leader’s Toolkit: Apply a systematic, sustainable framework with case studies from iconic companies like Southwest Airlines and Starbucks to transform your own team, department, or organization.

Why do some workplace cultures inspire energy and innovation, while others fuel anxiety, boredom, or cynicism? Until now, such legendary cultures have seemed like magic beyond our control. However, behind every culture is a surprisingly elegant science.

Primed to Perform proves that the highest-performing cultures are built on a simple truth: why people work affects how well they work. Great organizations inspire the three most powerful motives for work—play, purpose, and potential—and eliminate the three most destructive—emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. They create total motivation (or ToMo, for short). Total motivation cultures create the highest-performing employees and the most adaptive organizations.

Authors Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show that extraordinary performance at companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Apple, and Whole Foods comes from cultures that inspire total motivation. They describe how investment professionals, salespeople, teachers, and CEOs perform better when driven by total motivation. And, most important, they share how you can build a culture that inspires total motivation in every moment of every day.

Primed to Perform builds on over a century of academic thinking as well as the authors' original research into how ToMo drives performance at iconic companies. It introduces the authors' highly predictive new measurement tool, the total motivation factor, which allows leaders to measure the strength of their culture and understand how it changes over time. It gives leaders the tools to transform their own workplaces.

High-performing cultures can't be left to chance; organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you're a five-person team or a start-up, an elementary school or a university, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.

“This book is loaded with fascinating, thought-provoking and actionable advice that could transform a workplace from drudgery to real engagement. Take notes.” - -Patrick Lencioni, president, The Table Group, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage

“Primed to Perform doesn’t just provide tactics for motivating a few superstars; it offers a proven system for motivating an entire workforce. If you want to get your team off yesteryear’s career ladders and onto new learning curves--stretching, growing and contributing at their best--read this book.” - -Liz Wiseman, President, The Wiseman Group, bestselling author of Multipliers and Rookie Smarts

“It is a myth that it takes an outsized personality like Steve Jobs or grand executive speeches about growing earnings per share to build truly impressive cultures. The key is employees who perform because they are motivated for their own reasons. ,Primed to Perform gives you the tools, backed by new scientific evidence and insightful examples, to create the conditions that make this happen. Whether you work at a startup or run a global company, build and sustain your own great culture by using Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor’s innovative Total Motivation Factor.” - -Jeremy Eden and Terri Long, Co-CEOs, Harvest Earnings Group and Co-authors of the New York Times bestseller of Low-Hanging Fruit

“Getting organizational culture right is as difficult as it is critical. Doshi and McGregor provide numerous real-world recommendations for how to do this. They bring to bear years of hands-on experience that will prove invaluable to leaders in all sectors-corporate, non-profit, and public.” - -Joel Klein, CEO Amplify, former Chancellor NYC public schools.

“Getting organizational culture right is as difficult as it is critical. Doshi and McGregor provide numerous real-world recommendations for how to do this. They bring to bear years of hands-on experience that will prove invaluable to leaders in all sectors-corporate, non-profit, and public.” - -Tom Doctoroff, CEO Asia Pacific, J. Walter Thompson, author of Twitter is Not a Strategy

“A winning strategy requires a winning organizational culture to carry it forward. In Primed to Perform former McKinsey consultants Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor give us practical guidance and proven practices to effectively transform our organizations through the science of motivation and performance.” - -Jeff DeGraff , The dean of innovation, professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, author of Leading Innovation

“A fresh, ambitious look at the science and practice of motivation, with big implications for leaders to fuel high-performing, high-energy cultures. Primed to Perform is an excellent companion to Drive.” - -Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take

“A grand tour of the science of culture, filled with awe-inspiring experiments and surprising, real-life case studies. Smart, deeply researched, and incredibly practical, leaders will turn to this book again and again whether they’re building an organization from scratch or transforming an established company.” - -Shawn Achor, happiness researcher and New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage