Dick Clark’s CANE Model for Improving Motivation

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When motivation (a lack thereof) is an underlying problem that accounts for a lack of performance, we need a robust, research-backed way to answer this question:  

How do people decide to invest effort and then get (and stick) with the program?

Here’s an article that includes a helpful model that you can use to demystify and address motivation issues at work (and in your personal life, too):

Motivating Performance: Diagnosing and Solving Motivation Problems and Opportunities

Published as: Motivating Performance: Part 1 – Diagnosing and Solving Motivation Problems. Performance Improvement, 37(8), 39-46.

Clark’s article answers essential questions for those times when you suspect that a lack of motivation is a significant issue in a performance problem:

  • What if we underestimate the importance of motivation in performance? Sadly, this is easy to do.
  • What if we had a systematic approach to solving motivation problems? Do we need that? Yes! Plus, this article offers one.
    What are the factors that lead us to commit to a goal? There are three main factors; each one is explained, with examples.
    What should we do once we identify the factors that are out of whack? The article includes a worked example and the main solutions for each factor.

Working with motivation issues can be a challenge. Thankfully, they don’t have to remain mysterious, and there’s a process we can follow to make things better.

Published by Jeanne Farrington

Dr. Jeanne Farrington has been in the training & performance improvement field for over 30 years as a practitioner, manager, and consultant. She works in her own small consulting firm, J. Farrington Consulting, where she provides advice on strategic approaches to training and performance improvement for government, military, and corporate organizations. In addition, she also enjoys rolling up her sleeves to do the actual work of designing and developing custom training and performance improvement solutions. She also teaches graduate seminars in instructional design at California State University Monterey Bay. She has a master's degree from San Jose State in Instructional Technology and a doctorate from USC in Educational Psychology. She's a long-time member of ISPI where she is a past president. If there's an Amazon.com link in this post, then there's a possibility that she will receive a small commission if you purchase something.

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