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.

Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor have a combined twenty years of practical experience transforming cultures at iconic institutions. They are the cofounders of Vega Factor, a company that helps organizations build high- performing, adaptive cultures through technology, learning programs, and human capital systems. Previously, Neel Doshi was a partner at McKinsey & Company and a founding member of a tech start-up. Lindsay McGregor led projects at McKinsey & Company with Fortune 500 companies as well as school systems and nonprofits. Lindsay and Neel are married and live in New York City.