I hear this a lot and am starting to wonder if they teach that in business school?
You don't motivate people by "aligning them with the company vision". That only leads to these embarrassing company events where the 3 stakeholders gush over their "mission statement" for 45 minutes straight while 3/4 of the attendants really only wait for the free pizza to arrive...
You motivate people by treating them like adults, paying them well, and by minimizing the amount of bullshit in their workflow.
Fundamentally I don't think you can motivate people. We may actually be saying similar things, but I think you can only really demotivate them by treating them in a psychotic, demeaning or inhumane ways. Motivation on the other hand is is an emergent, instrinsic human quality that can only be killed, not created. "Not killing it" as you say is largely a question of people actually contributing to work that they find worthwhile and having their contributions respected by the company. But there are some folks who would never be motivated, as they simply do not have that quality within themselves.
I think it's possible to motivate people by providing positive feedback. Suppose you work on a web app, and have 1k signups on the day you go live, and 2k on the next day. Wouldn't that increase motivitation?
I surely enjoy watching the visitor stats of a new website, and feel more motivated when they are rising quickly.
Yes, you can't motivatve everybody for everything, but I do think it's possible to achieve something with positive feedback.
There are classes for that in business school, such as orgazinational behaviour and leadership, but like most of academic learning, you learn to pass a test, not on how well its applied in the real world
And how do you make sure these super-productive adults with their optimized workflows are, you know, actually working on the right thing?
It's easy to naysay "all that traditional biz school bullshit" until it's your job to make 10 top-notch programmers who are each convinced they are great architects to all write code that somebody else is going to pay for.
until it's your job to make 10 top-notch programmers who are each convinced they are great architects to all write code that somebody else is going to pay for.
That makes no sense. That isn't your job, it's your CTO's job.
Comments
It's very hard to effectively motivate people
I hear this a lot and am starting to wonder if they teach that in business school?
You don't motivate people by "aligning them with the company vision". That only leads to these embarrassing company events where the 3 stakeholders gush over their "mission statement" for 45 minutes straight while 3/4 of the attendants really only wait for the free pizza to arrive...
You motivate people by treating them like adults, paying them well, and by minimizing the amount of bullshit in their workflow.
Fundamentally I don't think you can motivate people. We may actually be saying similar things, but I think you can only really demotivate them by treating them in a psychotic, demeaning or inhumane ways. Motivation on the other hand is is an emergent, instrinsic human quality that can only be killed, not created. "Not killing it" as you say is largely a question of people actually contributing to work that they find worthwhile and having their contributions respected by the company. But there are some folks who would never be motivated, as they simply do not have that quality within themselves.
I think it's possible to motivate people by providing positive feedback. Suppose you work on a web app, and have 1k signups on the day you go live, and 2k on the next day. Wouldn't that increase motivitation? I surely enjoy watching the visitor stats of a new website, and feel more motivated when they are rising quickly.
Yes, you can't motivatve everybody for everything, but I do think it's possible to achieve something with positive feedback.
There are classes for that in business school, such as orgazinational behaviour and leadership, but like most of academic learning, you learn to pass a test, not on how well its applied in the real world
And how do you make sure these super-productive adults with their optimized workflows are, you know, actually working on the right thing?
It's easy to naysay "all that traditional biz school bullshit" until it's your job to make 10 top-notch programmers who are each convinced they are great architects to all write code that somebody else is going to pay for.
until it's your job to make 10 top-notch programmers who are each convinced they are great architects to all write code that somebody else is going to pay for.
That makes no sense. That isn't your job, it's your CTO's job.
And if you're the CTO?
Good programmers love what they do with passion.
If you're the CTO and manage to ruin this so bad for them that "motivating the team" becomes an ongoing concern then you should be fired.