Introduction
Organizations deliver services to their customers via employees. For customers to be contented with the offered services, employee motivation towards the fulfillment of a firm’s goals aims, and objectives is incredibly important. Organizations that seek to improve employee impetus focus on fulfilling the workers’ needs. They also concentrate on ensuring that employees execute their responsibilities much quicker through the establishment of inspiration programs. This paper establishes the difference between motivation and inspiration. It also shows how the two concepts are applied in organizations.
Motivation and Inspiration
Wright and Gardner (2005) present motivation as a key component of encouraging people within an organization to embrace creative thinking, which enhances innovation in terms of technology and approaches to their day-to-day organizational operations. Motivation is the art and science of ensuring that the labor force does what a boss or an executive wants it to do because it wants and/or is interested in doing it. Daft (2014) links the concept of inspiration with leadership where the leader has to encourage people to work because they want to accomplish a task to attain a long-term goal. Motivation differs from inspiration. The former concept relies on people’s feelings. Motivated people look up to the incoming advanced things. They work tirelessly to achieve it. Inspiration involves looking for the big things that shape the bigger organizational picture. Hence, the focus of motivation is on short-term gains. Frey (2012) approaches the subject from a practical angle where he illustrates the role of awarding performing individuals as a way of motivating and inspiring them to remain steadily focused on the bigger picture.
How Managers and Leaders Use Motivation and Inspiration
Motivation is a driving force that ensures that people within an organization perform a given activity to certain levels. Through such performance, certain psychological factors and physiological needs of people are achieved. The satisfaction of these needs depends on various internal and external factors in an organization. These factors include job approval, execution, appreciation, contentment with pay and wages, working circumstances, and association with an organization’s success among others (Wright & Gardner, 2005). For example at Virgin Media, which is a UK incorporated company that deals with the provision of the internet, television, and telephone services, managers have ensured the creation of well-engaged and committed employees (Virgin Media Inc., 2012). Guaranteeing employee satisfaction with their jobs is also important at Google and Yahoo companies.
In the case of Yahoo, its leader Marissa Mayer has persuaded the design team to innovate and create competitive products (Carlson, 2013). Mayer has already identified products such as Yahoo News and Yahoo Search as some of the business techniques, which have contributed to Yahoo’s success for a long period (Carlson, 2013). However, product creators and innovators need motivation to redesign products to make them more competitive. Mayer’s success at Google Company also acts as an immense source of inspiration (Carlson, 2013). Mayer uses inspiration to ensure that employees remain focused on the bigger picture of ensuring that the Yahoo Company rejuvenates in terms of profitability and leadership in the internet market.
Conclusion
Motivation involves controlling people’s thoughts, steps, and proceedings. When this control is lost, the willpower, which is the basic tenet of motivation, may disappear. Inspiration involves guarding what people believe is important and leaning on the bigger picture that depicts what an organization considers the most valuable. As the paper has revealed, Google and Yahoo companies provide a working illustration of how motivation and inspiration can be applied in organizations to enhance their productivity.
Reference List
Carlson, N. (2013). The truth about Marissa Mayer: An unauthorized biography. Web.
Daft, R. (2014). The Leadership Experience. Nashville, Tennessee: South-Western College Publishing.
Frey, T. (2012).Motivation and inspiration. Journal of Environmental Health, 75(3), 68
Virgin Media Inc. (2012). Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012. Washington, DC. United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wright, P., & Gardner, T. (2005). The relationship between HR practices and firm performance: Examining causal order. Personnel Psychology, 8(5), 409-447.