Why We Still Get It Wrong, Decades After Edward Deci Proved Us Wrong
For decades, organisations ran on a simple idea.
People work for rewards.
People avoid punishment.
Pay them more, threaten them if needed, and performance will follow.
It sounds clean. It sounds logical. It is also deeply flawed.
Then came Edward L. Deci.
His work, along with Richard Ryan, did something uncomfortable. It showed that much of what we believed about motivation was wrong.
Not slightly wrong.
Fundamentally wrong.
What we used to believe
Before Deci, motivation was treated like a lever.
You pull it using money, bonuses, promotions, or fear.
People respond. Output increases. Problem solved.
This model worked well for:
- Routine work
- Repetitive tasks
- Industrial environments
So organisations scaled it.
The problem is that most modern work is not routine.
It requires thinking. Judgment. Creativity. Ownership.
And that is exactly where the old model breaks.
Because the more you control people, the less they think.
The more you push, the less they care.
What Deci showed instead
Deci’s work led to what is now called Self Determination Theory.
At its core, it says something very simple.
People are not just driven by external rewards.
They are driven by internal needs.
Three of them:
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Relatedness
If these are present, people engage deeply.
If they are absent, motivation collapses.
Not immediately. But inevitably.
1. Autonomy
The need to feel you have choice
Autonomy does not mean freedom without structure.
It means having a sense of ownership over your work.
Being able to decide how to approach a problem.
Having a say in decisions that affect you.
In most organisations, autonomy is the first casualty.
Everything needs approval.
Decisions move up, not across.
People are told what to do, how to do it, and when.
Then leaders complain that people are not proactive.
Of course they are not.
2. Competence
The need to feel you are getting better
People want to improve. To master something. To feel progress.
But most organisations confuse activity with growth.
- More meetings
- More reports
- More dashboards
Very little real skill building.
Feedback is either vague or political.
Performance reviews are backward looking.
So people stay busy.
But they don’t get better.
And when competence stalls, motivation drops.
Because effort without progress is exhausting.
3. Relatedness
The need to feel connected
This is the most misunderstood.
Relatedness is not about forced bonding or team lunches.
It is about:
- Trust
- Respect
- Being heard without punishment
In many organisations, this is replaced by what can only be called culture theatre.
Values on walls.
Offsites.
Workshops on “belonging”.
But the moment someone challenges a decision or speaks uncomfortable truth, the reaction is immediate.
Silence. Exclusion. Labeling.
People learn quickly.
So they disconnect.
Why organisations ignore all three
This is where things get uncomfortable.
It is not because leaders don’t know better.
It is because the system is designed differently.
Autonomy reduces control.
Competence takes time and patience.
Relatedness requires leaders to tolerate discomfort.
Most systems optimise for:
- Predictability
- Speed
- Control
So what do organisations do instead?
They double down on:
- Incentives
- Targets
- Monitoring
- Reporting
All external.
All visible.
All measurable.
And all limited.
What they get instead
Short bursts of performance.
Followed by:
- Burnout
- Disengagement
- Quiet compliance
People do what is required.
Nothing more.
They stop thinking beyond their role.
They stop taking risks.
They stop caring.
Not because they are lazy.
Because the system makes caring expensive.
The real problem
Deci’s work explains something most leaders avoid.
Motivation is not something you give people.
It is something you either support or destroy.
And most organisations destroy it slowly.
Through:
- Over control
- Poor feedback
- Political environments
Then they try to fix it with incentives.
Which is like pressing harder on the accelerator while the engine is failing.
Can this change?
Yes.
But not through slogans.
It requires shifts that most organisations resist.
- Give real decision space, not token autonomy
- Build skill deliberately, not just measure output
- Create environments where disagreement is not punished
This sounds simple.
It is not.
Because it changes power.
And power does not give way easily.
Why this matters now
The nature of work has changed.
AI, automation, and complexity are removing routine tasks.
What remains is:
- Thinking
- Judgment
- Adaptability
Exactly the kind of work that cannot be forced.
It has to be enabled.
Which brings us back to Deci.
His work was not just academic.
It was a warning.
Ignore human motivation at your own cost.
Most organisations did.
And many still do.
A final thought
If you want better performance, don’t start with incentives.
Start with the system.
Because people are not underperforming in isolation.
They are responding to the environment you created.
Fix that, and motivation follows.
Ignore it, and nothing else will work.
If this tension between performance, behaviour, and system design feels familiar, that is exactly the work I do with leadership teams and executives. Not theory. Not motivation.
Real shifts in how people think, decide, and operate when it matters.