The Starting Points Counts

How do you motivate yourself and others?

When you want to motivate yourself or others, you can do it in two different ways:

You can create a Burning Platform – this is what we would typically call an “away from” motivation or a Burning Desire – this is what we would typically call a “towards” motivation.

The consequences of working from a Burning Platform …

Let’s be clear – working with a Burning Platform as a starting point can work, and throughout history, this approach has produced many remarkable results.

Just think of Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech to the British Parliament on June 4, 1940.

When we choose to refrain from using a Burning Platform as our starting point to create motivation, it is because it does not support long-term sustainable results and healthy profit.

… with customers

If you use a Burning Platform as your Starting Point – focusing on the customers’ Problems and Pains in your sales work – you can make the customer buy from you here and now – mainly when the platform is burning out there.

The negative consequence is that the feeling you create in the customers when you interact with them this way will be associated with you and your brand.

Typically, the Burning Platform approach will only work with the same customer a few times before they start to think: “How come I keep having Problems? I thought I was paying you to make my Problems and Pains disappear.” And then they will start – consciously or unconsciously – to avoid you and look for a new supplier and another solution.

There are better strategies than working from a Burning Platform if you want the customers to become Positive Activists (ultra-loyal customers).

… with employees

In the same way, when you use a Burning Platform, Problems or Pain in your management of your employees, you will also be able to see results in the short term.

In other words, you can scare your employees into working harder for a time to create a better performance.

However, you risk several employees becoming burnt out and apathetic over time. They get the experience that it continues to hurt no matter what and how much they do.

… with dogs

In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman used this strategy to create helplessness in a well-known experiment with dogs called “Learned helplessness.”

In this experiment, he brought a dog into a compartment with two boxes separated by a few inches high barrier.

He then gave the dog an electrical shock through the metal floor of the box it was placed in. The only way the dog could escape the pain was to jump over the barrier to the other box, after which the shock was applied again.

Martin Seligman's observation was that after a few times, the dog gave up. It just laid apathetically in the box and put up with the pain.

… in strategic and change management

So, the Burning Platform is not the best approach if you want proactive and energetic employees who can maintain a sustainable performance – also when change is needed.

When you use a Burning Platform, Problems, or Pain as a starting point for change management, you risk your organization wasting efforts on the wrong activities because you may be solving some of your problems. Still, it is being determined if you will set the right direction for your business.

And then there is the ethical aspect …

Finally, a more extensive and – for most of us – more profound question arises: if you choose to use a Burning Platform, Problems, or Pain as your starting point to create performance and results …

Is it ethically justifiable to scare people and, this way, force them to do what you want?

We don’t think so.

This is the most crucial reason we have chosen to start in a different place when working with organizations, employees, and customers.

Our world is a world defined by a Burning Desire.

The consequences of working from a Burning Desire …

In our approach and our models, we start by uncovering what already works well

• for the customers or

• the organization or

• the employees or

• any human system that we are working with, for that matter.

If you start in a negative state, focusing on the problems you experience, you may be able to find a solution to those problems – and you may even find a workable solution – but often, you will not find the correct answers to the questions that underlie the issues.

However, we will not let our actions be defined solely by the challenges. It is not enough for us to solve problems. They are merely projections of the past.

We must start in a different place to create real change and actual value.

If you take your starting point in a positive state and focus on what is already working for you – your strengths – you will be able to concentrate on what you want – an outcome with a higher and more lasting value than the value created by just solving another problem.

The fundamental idea here is that there is a more extensive system surrounding the (human) system with which we work and that the system with which we work reacts to this more comprehensive system.

Thus, the model aims to use less time and energy to change the system we are working with. On the contrary, the aim is to reorient it and expand it constructively to accommodate the information from the more extensive system.

The Starting Point Counts

In the case of dynamic systems – and humans, including organizations with living people in them, are always dynamic systems – the process is initiated by starting with what works for the system and then letting the goal rather than the problem define the procedures; otherwise, the situation would become part of the solution, i.e., the starting point counts.

Thus, we start by uncovering what already works for the system – the Present State+ (PS+) – instead of what doesn’t work for the system – the Pain, the Problem, the Burning Platform – characterized by the negative state that we could call Present State– (PS­-).

This is the starting point used in most conventional models in sales and interaction with human systems in general.

From there – from the Present State+ (PS+) – we create an outcome, a Burning Desire called the Desired State++ (DS++), with a higher and more lasting value than the value created by just putting out another fire, solving one more problem, or relieving an additional pain, resulting in a state that we could call the Desired State or DS, without any connotation.

This is the model we usually use to show why it makes so much sense to start in the green Present State+ (PS+) and create a Burning Desire from there instead of starting on a burning platform in the red Present State– (PS­-) when we work with human systems.

The mindset we apply when we position ourselves in the green zone, where the human system works at its best – the PS+ – and use a Burning Desire

Or, to put it in other words, The limits to people’s achievements are not set by their weaknesses – their problems – but by their strengths – their talents.

Their boundaries are defined by what already works for them.

Therefore, when leading human systems, it makes much more sense to take the green path and start with what already works than taking the red course and beginning with what doesn’t work.

When working with a purely mechanical system, the situation is different.

Here, the old saying that the “weakest part of the chain” defines its strength applies.

If the back tire of your bicycle has a puncture, then you have a Burning Platform – you are in the red zone. When you have mended the tire, the bike will work again – and you will be back in the green zone.

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