Wants or Needs – Which one drives change?

Two words, Wants and Needs, are fascinating to me when it comes to identifying what ultimately drives individuals, teams and organizations to change. There are many opinions and perspectives about these words out there and I’m going to add my beliefs to the mix.

Here are a couple items that are most commonly brought up regarding these words.

1) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: The classic model that lays out the multiple layers of self-actualization and has physical requirements of well being at the base of his needs pyramid. Maslow’s concept of moving up the pyramid to more complex needs is a helpful one in terms of understanding the challenges of sustaining change at the self-actualization level of the pyramid.

2) Financial Planning: Needs are the things we have to have in our lives to survive like, air, water, and food. A want is something someone would like to have like cars, televisions and computers. People can survive without the wants or discretionary spending.

These are just a couple of items surrounding these two words and there are plenty more where they came from. Yet for me, I think about these words because when it comes to making change I have a bias for working with people, teams and organizations that want to make a shift. Their desire may come from a recognized or identified need, but they are approaching the effort by empowering themselves and taking action because they want to change rather than needing to.

The difference is very subtle but important. Think about the last time you were told by someone that you need to do something. It is challenging to hear and more than likely leads to resentment or resistance. I get reminded of this regularly with my children. When I try to tell them what they need to do, I rarely get the outcome I was hoping for. However, if I can use what I call “guided discovery” to get them to want something for themselves, more than likely they will go for it because they want it rather than me needing them to do it.

For some this may be a stretch and parenting is always a challenging example because as parents sometimes we just know what is needed and the child may not based upon their developmental stage. However if we put this type of scenario in place in the work environment with a manager and an employee, we end up with a similar dynamic. Think of an employee review session where there is a lot of “you need to this and that” as compared to, “what do you want to work on to develop yourself?” Two very different approaches with likely very different outcomes based upon my experience.

So as you look at what you are working on for yourself these days, you may want to stop to consider whether you are doing it because you need to or because you want to. My belief is there is much more sustainable energy in pursuing what you want versus what you think you need to. An identified need may be what forces you into action initially but it will likely not be strong enough to sustain you for the long haul disciplined and dedicated efforts that change on any level requires. For those significant undertakings, I think individuals, teams and organizations have to want it. What about you?