The situation
Anyone who works in a logistics centre does more than pick orders. Between jobs there is restocking to do, order to keep, a new colleague to train, and it is precisely this work around the work that often decides whether a shift runs smoothly or backs up. This overall performance was the subject when the company approached us.
What made the enquiry interesting was less the problem than the form it arrived in: not as a question but as an order. We need something for motivation, they said, people should have more fun at work so that they stay longer, performance rises and employee lifetime value grows. The desired product already had a name, namely gamification. That is not a quirk of this client but the normal case, because organisations rarely order diagnoses, they order solutions they have seen elsewhere. It is for precisely this moment that our gatekeeper exists.
What the gatekeeper found
Before any engagement, the COM‑B check tests whether a behaviour problem actually sits where the client suspects it does: in capability, in the environment, or in the drive to act. Here it quickly became clear that a substantial part of the problem had nothing to do with wanting. Employees often simply did not know when there was an opportunity to step in: where restocking was needed at that moment, who required support, what currently had priority.
That is not a motivation gap, it is an environment gap, concretely missing signalling and missing feedback. You cannot blame people for not seizing an opportunity that is invisible to them, and you cannot motivate the invisibility away, any more than a better driver compensates for a fogged‑up windscreen.
What the analysis showed
For the share of the problem that genuinely sat with the drive to act, the analysis delivered the second surprise. The Drive Method first assigns a behaviour to the job it is meant to fulfil and then asks which form of motivation that job requires. Picking, restocking, prioritising against clear specifications: these are activities whose quality depends on precision, reliability and speed, and such behaviours run stably in the zones that Self‑Determination Theory calls external and introjected regulation.
On the Behavioral Solution Matrix that sits on the left side, and left means: good reward systems and good feedback systems, which show why it matters to do this now rather than that, are not the second‑best solution after intrinsic motivation here, they are the right one. A gamification aimed at fun and intrinsic drive would have built past this behaviour, the way a sports car is built past the needs of a haulage firm: not because it is bad, but because it answers a question nobody asked.
The recommendation
The recommendation therefore had two levels. On the environment level: build signalling and feedback so that opportunities become visible before they are missed, and so that employees learn, at the moment of decision, why this task counts now. On the behaviour level: a reward architecture that fits the actual motivation zone, instead of a game mechanic that addresses a different one.
The implementation then ran largely with the client itself, which is not a blemish on this case but its point: when the diagnosis is precise, the solution often turns out simpler than the order was.
What it spared the company
There are projects whose value is measured in percentage points, and there are projects whose value consists in another project never being built. This one belongs to the second kind. Without the check, the company would have invested time and money in a motivation solution that cannot solve a visibility problem and would have addressed the wrong motivation zone, and the failure would presumably have been attributed to the employees, because that is how such failures are usually booked.
The cheapest intervention is sometimes the one a good diagnosis prevented.