Maybe life is too short to stuff a mushroom after all. That is one conclusion to draw from the news that Sébastien Bras, a three-star Michelin chef, has decided to renounce the usually longed-for accolade and choose a simpler existence in the kitchen instead.

“I want to give a new meaning to my life … and redefine what is essential,” he said earlier this week in a Facebook video message. He still wants to cook, it seems, just not quite so much of the fancy stuff and not under the pressure of constant scrutiny.

How should you react to achieving a lifetime’s ambition? The restless and the neurotic will press on, set new goals, imagining new threats or rivals to dispatch. Alexander the Great was said to have wept when he saw there were no new lands to conquer. But Bras has decided that, having reached the top, it is time to do something else, to choose a different, calmer life. There is a risk, of course, that once you have reached a peak it is hard to avoid a sense of slipping downhill. But keeping up a three-star level of culinary performance does not seem to Bras to be worth the candle, or the linen, or the silverware.

Motivation and satisfaction in doing a job well is shattered if you feel disrespected, menaced or taken for granted

Indeed, that elusive third star sometimes seems to have as much to do with staffing levels and degrees of luxury as it does with the cooking. It costs a lot of money to run a place like that. If each customer isn’t spending an average of £100 a head, a three-star establishment is probably going to struggle break even.

The real significance of Bras’ decision is what it tells us about motivation and meaningful achievement at work. What he likes is cooking, not the theatre and outward frippery of the three-star venue. Nor does he want to be measured by the anonymous and unsmiling Michelin inspectors who might descend at any moment. He wants to do work that he feels good about, which matters to him. He wants to satisfy customers, not hit arbitrary targets or conform to other people’s ideas of quality. His motivation comes from within. He cannot be motivated or “incentivised” by other people. It is all down to him.

Managers should pay attention to chef Sébastien. They might try to impose performance measures on their employees. They might dangle carrots in the hope of encouraging higher output. But people are not donkeys. They are wise to these crude tactics. Sensible employers have been rethinking their approach to managing performance, with firms such as Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, General Electric and PricewaterhouseCoopers all abandoning the traditional annual appraisal.

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Carrots and sticks – or plain old intimidation – will not work, not in the long run. What the psychologist Frederick Herzberg called “kick in the ass” management can produce movement, but not motivation. As he explained in a famous Harvard Business Review article almost 50 years ago: “If I kick my dog (from the front or the back), he will move. And when I want him to move again what must I do? I must kick him again. Similarly, I can change a person’s battery, and then recharge it, and recharge it again. But it is only when one has a generator of one’s own that we can talk about motivation. One then needs no outside stimulation. One wants to do it.”

Whether you are an overworked chef or an overworked pilot, the intrinsic motivation and satisfaction in doing a job well will be shattered if you feel disrespected, menaced or simply taken for granted. The curse of bad management practice can be found at every level, in the professions too. It is not just Uber drivers, Deliveroo riders, couriers and retail sector workers on zero-hours contracts who have to worry about poor treatment, bad conditions and overwork.

Our newly liberated chef is thus an important role model. He is taking back control. He is rejecting the drudgery of the career ladder and the self-imposed pressure of conforming to other people’s expectations and standards. He is going to cook what he likes when he likes, and satisfy his own personal ambitions. Let others worry about Michelin stars. Bras will concentrate on pleasing his customer and, in the process, himself.

Bravo, Sébastien. I’ll have a nice plate of egg and chips please, when you’re ready.

• Stefan Stern is the author of Myths of Management, and a visiting professor at Cass Business School