“What was the primary means of motivation in those days?” – Carl
Reiner and Mel Brooks, The Two Thousand Year Old Man For the
2000 year old man, fear may have been a very effective
motivator: when he saw a lion, he was motivated to run the other
way. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with fear. Fear doesn’t
make someone move toward safety; it makes them move away from
danger. Same thing? Not really. In jujitsu, pain can be used to
invoke a fear of injury. Someone experiencing that pain, and
that fear, will move away from it, even if moving away means
running full tilt into the nearest tree. In business, the same
phenomenon occurs. Faced with an unexpected problem or setback,
the most common response is to highlight the threat to the
organization and all the terrible things that will happen if the
threat is not immediately countered. This practice of attempting
to motivate people to work harder through fear – fear of
competition, loss of market share, job loss, company going out
of business, and so forth – m