A clever entrepreneur I know, called “Peter”, has a favourite parlour game; it works best if the participants are decidedly ambitious. He asks them to choose their personal ranking for three primal motivations: money, power and recognition. Their answer tells them which career steps to take. It is a more practical – and visceral – version of “Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs”, which includes such vague concepts as self-actualisation. Possibly, we should call it “Peter’s hierarchy of human motivations”.
The quiz encapsulates the vital drivers in a blunt but brilliant way. It cuts out the fluff. The ingenuity of the selection is the simplicity: it boils down lots of complicated psychometric testing to three factors. And I like the honesty of the words. Unlike so many questionnaires, it does not pretend that our desires are all worthy. It asks us if we are, in the darkest parts of our souls, avaricious, megalomaniac or conceited.
Some respondents attempt to cheat, and insist their overriding motive is an urge to do good, or a similar affectation. This contest is too ruthless for such stuff. It acknowledges that gentle souls, who really believe in noble causes above all else, are unlikely to rise to the top in business, politics, the media and so forth. They spend their lives working with the underprivileged or the equivalent. And I suspect that they do not meet my entrepreneur friend or read this newspaper.
The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.
Stefan Stern writes a column on Tuesdays on 
Ravi Mattu is the editor of 
Lucy Kellaway writes a column on Mondays on 
Luke Johnson writes an FT column on Wednesdays on 
Lucy Kellaway, FT columnist and associate editor, offers her solution to your workplace problems in a column in the Financial Times. In the 
