If you’re new to this site, you may be wondering, “What is MCode?” Simply put, MCode is a powerful assessment that identifies your natural motivational patterns and then describes the exact environments in which you’ll struggle or thrive — so you can show up at your best every single day.
What is MCode and why do you need it?
When we talk about motivation, most people immediately think of some sort of temporary mojo — the kind that sparks after watching a moving TED talk or reading an inspirational book. But after 60+ years of research, the Motivation Code assessment (or MCode, for short) tells us our innate motivations run much deeper.
When you operate in alignment with your natural motivational drivers, you access a different kind of energy — one that doesn’t deplete in the same way willpower does. This explains why some tasks leave you energized even after hours of intense focus, while others leave you feeling exhausted after just a few minutes.
This isn’t just about finding work you “like” or “enjoy.” It’s about understanding the specific types of challenges, contributions, and achievements that align with your unique motivational design, so you can experience that state of ‘flow’ where time seems to disappear and work feels like a natural expression of who you are.
We’ve all experienced the power of being highly motivated at certain times of our lives. So, why is it that we struggle to articulate what specifically motivates us?
Quick… can you name your top five motivations?
If not, how can you expect to find motivation when you need it most?
That’s where the Motivation Code assessment (or MCode, for short) comes in. MCode is the first and only assessment that helps you identify the unique motivational pattern that runs through your personal achievement stories — activities and moments in your life where you felt the most joy, success, and personal satisfaction.
How does MCode work?
The MCode assessment guides you through a three-step reflection and discovery process that takes about 30 minutes to complete.
Step 1: Share your stories
Everything MCode reveals about you is based on your stories. You’ll start by sharing a few stories about the most important, meaningful, and satisfying achievements from any part of your life.
Step 2: Answer a few questions
Next, the MCode assessment asks a series of questions about your stories and experiences. You’ll answer questions about how you felt, what you did, what you enjoyed, and why the stories matter, by ranking your answers on a scale of 1-10.
Step 3: Discover your MCode!
With your responses complete, the MCode algorithm applies 60 years of science and data to produce a detailed, highly-personalized report all about you. You’ll discover your unique MCode and how your motivations shape who you are and what you do.
Your MCode report includes a list of 32 different motivations, ranked from most satisfying to least satisfying. It also details how your motivations drive your actions, what energizes and drains you, environments where you’ll excel (and struggle), and any blind spots you might want to look out for.
But it doesn’t stop there. The full report contains 24 pages of detailed information about how you show up at your best, in addition to a dozen tools that can help you put your MCode results to work in your life right away.
In fact, that’s one of the most significant ways MCode is unlike any other assessment you’ve taken; it doesn’t categorize or give you a one-size-fits-all label. Rather, your personalized report is all about how to apply it to your work and home life, so you can see the results for yourself starting today.
Where did MCode come from?
In the late 1950’s, researchers began working to understand what motivates people. They observed that individuals demonstrate a recurring pattern of strengths that run through their stories of enjoyable activities.
By mapping achievement stories to the underlying motivations behind them, they developed the System for Identifying Motivational Abilities (SIMA©). Through their groundbreaking research, they discovered that beneath a person’s natural strengths there is an underlying drive that explains why they want to exercise those strengths and how their strengths are integrated.
About a decade ago, the team I now work for built an online assessment based on SIMA that generates a detailed motivational map, which we call your Motivation Code — or MCode, for short.
Since then, we’ve collected and analyzed over a million achievement stories from people all around the world. And those stories have been mapped to the 32 motivations that drive our behavior, inform our decisions, and propel us to seek out work that is both gratifying and fulfilling.
Not Just Another Personality Assessment
Traditional personality assessments tell you what you are. They categorize your behaviors, preferences, and traits into tidy boxes that help explain how you show up in the world.
Motivation Code reveals something more fundamental: why you do what you do.
This distinction is everything. Your personality might evolve throughout your life, but your core motivational pattern — which is established early and reinforced through your lived experiences — remains remarkably stable. It’s the hidden thread that runs through your most fulfilling accomplishments — those moments when you felt the most energized and at your absolute best.
The MCode assessment doesn’t just label you into broad categories. It identifies your unique motivational fingerprint from billions of possible combinations, and then describes how you can use your motivational pattern to align your work with how you’re naturally wired.
This mind-boggling level of precision allows us to pinpoint exactly which aspects of your work align with your authentic design and which create invisible friction that can lead to burnout and dissatisfaction.
Results You Can Use Right Away
Most assessments look to categorize you into broad buckets alongside millions of other people who are just like you. While you may learn some neat insights about yourself, more often than not, you quickly find yourself asking, “Okay, so what? Now what?”
Your Motivation Code isn’t just more trivia to collect or another label to wear.
MCode is a practical framework you can use to change your life.
And best of all, it highlights how you are uniquely wired to do incredible things.
When you understand your authentic motivational pattern, you’ll gain the ability to:
- Restructure your existing work to minimize friction and maximize flow.
- Make career decisions with clarity about what will truly fulfill you.
- Understand why certain accomplishments feel significant while others feel empty.
- Navigate burnout by addressing its root cause, not just its symptoms.
- Communicate your needs more effectively to colleagues and clients.
- Show up at your absolute best for your team, your family, friends, and yourself.
Your authentic motivational pattern isn’t something you work to develop. It’s something you uncover. And when you align your life and work with this pattern, everything changes.
If you’re ready to discover what truly lights you up, take the MCode assessment today. Then reach out and let’s talk about how to put it to work in your life!