101 Posts Found

Teams that fall in love with a problem have more successful outcomes than teams that fall in love with particular solutions. This is because knowing that a problem is worth solving continues to be motivating even when a team doesn’t come across the right solution on the first, second, or Nth try.

Content: Quotation | Author: Julie Zhuo | Source: Medium | Subjects: Challenge, Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions, Teamwork

Measures signal what is deemed important inside companies, because what is measured must be, almost by definition, important—just for the very fact of it being measured. Conversely, what is neglected by measures is, by inference, unimportant. Measures focus people’s attention. Measures typically drive rewards and reinforcement, because performance on measures has consequences for people’s raises, promotions, and job tenure. Therefore, and it should come as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

One of the risks of using motivation and discipline as single bullet strategies is that none of us is disciplined in every part of our lives. Neither are we motivated all of the time. And yet we rely on these two psychological factors to drive engagement and performance.

A better option, in our opinion, is to utilize design over discipline. What this means is, designing systems … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Dan Gregory, Kieran Flanagan | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

When we lose confidence that people have the will to do the right thing, and we turn to incentives, we find that we get what we pay for. […] There is really no substitute for the integrity that inspires people to do good work because they want to do good work. And the more we rely on incentives as substitutes for integrity, the more we … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Barry Schwartz | Source: Brain Pickings | Subjects: Human Resources, Integrity, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

When individuals’ rankings of workplace motivators are compared to rankings of what their managers think motivates them, the results reflect how most individuals feel: managers simply do not know what moti- vates their people. Why the big disconnect?

One reason is that leaders depend on their observations of external behaviors and conditions to evaluate their employees’ motivation. Unfortunately, many leaders are not perceptive observers, nor … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Susan Fowler | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Research shows that motivation works very differently for mechanical tasks versus tasks that require even minimal cognitive efforts. Mechanical tasks can be motivated by money. But this is not true for cognitive tasks where motivating factors include autonomy (having some say about the outcome), mastery (having a sense of personal growth), and purpose (having a sense of meaning). These are all achieved by giving people … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Gillis Jonk, Johan Aurik, Martin Fabel | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Too often a company’s executive motivation system flies in the face of strategic decision making. This occurs for two reasons. First, good managers tend to be promoted so fast that they never have to live with the medium- to long-run outcome of their plans. Second, incentive compensation is often tied either to short-term earnings performance or to stock-price movements, neither of which has anything to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Louis V. Gerstner | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Compensation, Corporate Governance, Management, Motivation

I like to say that people come to work for money, but they don’t work hard for money. That’s an overstatement, but you get my point — that managers always want to incentivize everything. I think it’s a cop-out to always focus on money as the key to motivation when we have known for 100 years that it’s not the key once you get beyond … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Compensation, Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Why do we do what we do? Our standard answer is that we do what we do because we expect it to lead to good consequences. [Don] Quixote reminds us that there is another possible answer: We do what we do because it fulfills our identity, our sense of self. Identity-based actions protect us from the discouragement of disappointing feedback. Of course, the cost is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James March | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior

What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work.

Content: Quotation | Author: Keith Yost | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Work

What people say they want and what people are willing to work their ass off to get are two different things.

Content: Quotation | Author: Hugh MacLeod | Subjects: Achievement, Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

No one is apathetic except those in pursuit of someone else’s objectives.

Content: Quotation | Author: Henry Ford | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

Content: Quotation | Author: George Bernard Shaw | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

All rewards, by virtue of being rewards, are not attempts to influence or persuade or solve problems together, but simply to control. […] Control breeds the need for more control, which then is used to justify the use of control. […] Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior. […] … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Alfie Kohn | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

There’s a lot of research that says that people are motivated and retained by three critical things. The first and most important is their personal development. The second is social connectiveness. In other words, they really like the people they work with; a great team they’re with; their boss nurtures and supports them and gives them feedback. Third is that they’re recognized, and part of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Christopher A. Bartlett | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

I learned from Peter J. Gomes that people burn out less from a lack of energy than from a lack of a sense of purpose.

Content: Quotation | Author: Taylor Bodman | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

It is the ego that spoils work and the ego is the centerpiece of most theories of motivation. We need not merely a theory of motivation but a theory of inspiration.

Content: Quotation | Author: M.P. Bhattathiri | Source: ManagementLearning.com | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

If you look at the psychology of loyalty—which I did—you see that it’s instinctive. It’s a survival technique that dates back to our pre-human ancestors. It’s a profound psychological need. You can’t dispense with it. At one point, we projected loyalty onto organizations. Now, we’re projecting it onto other people.

There can be other loyalties, too. Software developers are loyal to their product. They are willing … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John J. Clancy | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Almost all decisions, big and small, are choices between exploring new possibilities and exploiting old ones.

Content: Quotation | Author: Art Markman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

At some point, people have enough money to have financial security, live a comfortable, adventuresome lifestyle, and fulfill most of their aspirations in life. It is a mark of emotional and spiritual maturity to be able to say, “I have enough.” Past a certain point, it is not healthy to want more; actually, it is a kind of sickness.

Content: Quotation | Authors: John Mackey, Rajendra Sisodia | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ambition, Career, Motivation