Nov 21, 2009
THE MAGIC OF MOTIVATION
Unlike the strange people who inhabit Dilbert cartoons, I have learned that the key to getting people to do the right thing (what you consider to be the right thing) is motivation. If people have the conviction that they have something to gain by a certain action or inaction, they will invariably pursue that motivation.
I learned this truth at a tender age: I was in law school. In an effort to keep body and soul together in those lean days, I taught piano lessons to children in their homes. That was in the days when an adult person could be trusted alone with a child without needing three witnesses for protection. It was in the days of $3 gasoline, too. Not $3 a gallon, $3 to fill the tank.
Anyway, I was able to teach the kids to read music, a talent I had not perfected myself. I did this simply by motivating the kids to learn. They sucked up the learning like a sponge. I assume they had an aptitude for the skill, but I always felt teaching someone to do what I could not was rather a neat trick. But it taught me the value of motivation. A skill that can be applied to lawmaking if it is structured right.
If you notice that a law is observed more in the breach than the obedience, you know that the motivations are poorly structured.
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