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How to use the science of motivation to keep your best people — and unlock their best work
Your comp plan isn’t broken, your motivation model is. If you’re handing out raises, bonuses, and equity and still feel like you’re dragging the team uphill, you’re not crazy, you’re just running the right people on the wrong fuel. Guilt, FOMO, and “do it or you don’t get your bonus” might squeeze out a few more OKRs, but they kill creativity, learning, and the kind of problem-solving you actually raise venture money for.
Lindsay McGregor
Lindsay McGregor came with receipts. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Factor.ai and co-author of the bestselling book Primed to Perform. She’s worked with teams at Slack, Grab, Culture Amp, and Flexport, all asking the same question: how do we get people to perform at a high level without burning them out or turning work into a spreadsheet of punishments and rewards?
On CLIMB, she turns the science of motivation into a fast, usable playbook, even if you’re fundraising in a brutal market, running lean, and “HR” is still just your calendar and a Google Doc.
Big Idea: Total Motivation > Total Compensation
Every leader is secretly running two companies at once. The tactical one hits quotas, ships features, and follows the playbook. The adaptive one experiments, rewrites the script, and figures out how to win when the track changes overnight.
Most founders over-build the tactical and starve the adaptive. You tighten process, stack KPIs, and lean on pressure to hit numbers — and train people to stop thinking. Lindsay’s core insight: if you want consistency and innovation, you design for “total motivation” — more play, purpose, and potential, less fear, financial pressure, and inertia.
Key Takeaways
Tactical vs adaptive is the founder’s real job
You do need tight systems. But if you vanish into dashboards, your team turns into script-followers instead of problem-solvers. Lindsay’s advice: stay close to the front lines, especially in sales and product, and make it normal to tweak scripts, try new angles, and retire what doesn’t work. If you’re not near the experiments, you’re not near the truth.
Not all motivation is created equal
The good stuff:
Play – you enjoy the work itself.
Purpose – you care about the outcome.
Potential – you believe this work unlocks your next chapter.
The landmines:
Emotional pressure – guilt, anxiety, “I can’t let people down.”
Economic pressure – rankings, bonuses, carrot-and-stick threats.
Inertia – “I don’t know why I’m here, I just am.”
Only play, purpose, and potential fuel creativity. Your real job is to design roles, goals, and rituals that dial up the first three and quietly suffocate the last three.
Play is not in kombucha or ping pong, it’s problem-solving
Startup culture loves perks. But the ping-pong table is not the point. Real play is giving people meaty problems — “Which customer segment should we bet on?” “What message actually sticks?” — and permission to run experiments, look at data, and adapt. Lindsay even uses “play profiles” when hiring: ask what people do for fun when nobody pays them, then line that up with the problems you actually need solved.
Systems beat speeches, every time
Charisma is optional. Routines are not. Lindsay’s OS is simple: one 90-minute quarterly health check on how motivated the team feels for the next quarter, one quarterly skill conversation with each person, and clear priorities with visible experiments so everyone owns a few problems and reports what they’re testing and learning. It’s set-it-and-run, not a new religion.
Think Formula One pit crew: how you change the tires is the difference between winning and losing. If you “don’t have time” to tune how the team works, you’re choosing to race with a sloppy pit stop, and then acting surprised when someone else laps you.
If this sounds like your aggressive targets are being met by a tired team, and your calendar full of stress and bonus converations, this CLIMB episode with Lindsay McGregor of factor.ai is your reset button.
Watch or listen to the full conversation for the playbook on building a team that runs on play, purpose, and potential instead of guilt and vibes.
