Pressurizing employees to play hard according to your company policies and work culture can be counterproductive. Straightforward motivation, designed to keep employees working feels superficial, unimaginative and even hostile.

Trying to convince employees by being nice to them and telling them what they should do doesn’t seem to work in the modern workforce full of knowledge workers. This is because the focus is on what the employer wants, and not on the employee.

It is normal for an organization to have goals related to revenue, profit and increasing the bottom line. But most organizations forget that the engine of achieving such goals is the people working for the company, and if the focus is on how fast the employees are growing persona...