If he says, “But what’s my motivation?”, I say, “Your salary.”
I stumbled upon this Coding Horror post today which included a video that really intrigued me. Not so much from a “holy crap, I’ve never heard this before” perspective, but more of a “wow, finally some science to help middle management.” I hope that people who are in leadership situations think about these sorts of questions more often than they do. It has some interesting connotations when it comes to OSS, too.
I showed this to my buddy Spence, who had a good point to make — most of the incentives they talk about in the video assume that you’ve taken care of the basic need of “I am doing what I want to do.” I can try to be more purpose driven/self structured/masterful all I want, but if I’m doing something I don’t like doing I won’t have enough base motivation to get there.
