My recent post What Really Motivates Sales People generated some great conversation both in the comments here and on Linkedin. My most popular post to date, it’s clear people have a lot of opinions on behavior and how we are motivated to do things. The discussion reminded me of C.O.R.F.

I learned about C.O.R.F. early in my career at Born Information Systems. I talked about HOW I got the job at BORN in this post just the other day. C.O.R.F. operates from the simple assumption that people are motivated at work by 4 simple things and if your oganization can provide all four, no one will leave.

C.O.R.F-

Challenge – People are motivated by a challenge, they like to be pushed and stretched. People like to accomplish things of substance. Without a challenge people become bored and complacent which leads to disatisfaction

Opportunity – People are motiveated by opportunity, the ability to grow, gain more responsibility, move to differnt places, try different things and experience different roles. People need to feel they have opportunities to do different things, gain responsibility and grow as individuals.

Reward – People are motivated by being properly rewarded for their efforts and accomplishments. This can be in the form of money, recognition, awards, and more. People need to be feel they are appreciated and rewarded for their commitment to the company

Fun – People want to have fun where they work. They want to be able to enjoy their coworkers, hangup the phone and shutdown the computer and enjoy the company they work for. They want the job to be enjoyable. People want to smile, laugh and have fun where the work and with the people they work with.

Rick Born, the founder of BORN Information Systems came up with C.O.R.F. and built a $140 million dollar company around it in just 10 years.

I think Rick was onto something. If you worked at a place that challenged you, gave you opportunity to do different things and expand your career, rewarded you handsomely in both salary AND recognition and rewards for work well done and on top of it all was fun, would you leave?

Can you think of a time you left a company for any reason other than those. Sounds like pretty good motivation to stay to me.

Does your company embrace C.O.R.F.?