Motivation

In the early 1990s, I had the good fortune to work for Robert B. Reich, then the U.S. Secretary of Labor. He taught me a simple (and free) tool for diagnosing the health of an organization. When he visited companies and talked with employees, Reich listened carefully for the pronouns people used. Did employees refer […]

Call someone a “liar,” and it’s clearly an insult. Call someone a “genius,” and it’s almost always praise. But how about calling someone a “perfectionist”?  Is that a diss or a kiss? The answer, it turns out, depends on what kind of perfectionist the person is. And that depends, in turn, on the person’s motivation. […]

Richard Ryan, one of the behavioral scientists whose research figures prominently in Drive, thinks you might be, according to a recently released paper. But the reason for this “weekend effect” isn’t leisure, he says. It’s autonomy most of all — as well as the satisfaction that comes from emotional relationships.  On Saturdays and Sundays, he […]

(A “video excerpt” of Drive, created by the fantabulous Lindsey Testolin.)

The year and the decade are coming to an end (three cheers for that!), which means that many people are now contemplating their New Year’s resolutions. If you’re among those folks, there’s one resolution I hope you’ll consider for your office: Radically revamping performance reviews. New Year’s resolutions and performance reviews actually have a lot […]

To celebrate the arrival of 2010 and to thank the astonishing number of you who are pre-ordering Drive (the number of early orders already beats the monthly sales of AWNM‘s debut!), I am offering a free, exclusive New Year’s Day teleseminar. To participate, simply email the receipt for your Drive order to [email protected]. You’ll be […]

A software developer in California (I’ll call him Miles) wrote to me recently with a question about motivation. Instead of answering right away, I asked if I could pose his problem to all of you. Perhaps by combining our minds, we could be a free open source McKinsey & Company for motivation. So here’s Miles’s question […]

The inimitable Seth Godin has assembled a crew of five dozen thinkers and doers from around the world to tackle that question. In a remarkable collection of one-page essays, released today, each member of Godin’s dream team selects a single word — then uses it to offer guidance for the coming year. I especially liked […]

Management scholar Henry Mintzberg has a provocative solution to the problem of executive bonuses: Don’t trim or tweak them. Get rid of them altogether. In a persuasive and clear-eyed essay in a special section of the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Mintzberg says that no matter how you configure bonuses, they create twisted incentives […]

Truth be told, writing a book doesn’t yield many moments of exhilaration. But for me at least, there’s always one: When you see your baby for the very first time. That moment always makes me giddy. (And believe me: giddy is an instrument rarely heard in my emotional orchestra.) So here, for your viewing pleasure, […]