How to motivate your team ?

Extract of an interview of Professor Clayton Christensen (1) by George Mannes on CNN Money :

«  You want to be in a job where you’re motivated.

There’s a theory that was articulated by the late psychologist Frederick Herzberg. He makes a strong point that there’s a big difference between motivation and incentives. An incentive is, « I will pay you to want what I want. » Motivation means that you’ve got an engine inside of you that drives you to keep working in order to feel successful and to help the organization be successful. It causes you to keep at it through thick and thin.

Motivators are things like, « I have the opportunity to achieve important things, » « I get recognized for my achievements, » « I learn ways to be better, » and « I’m an important part of a team. » If you have those kinds of experiences every day, you’re motivated, and you’ll be satisfied.

Many of the factors that we think will cause motivation, such as fair pay and a good manager, won’t make you love your job. Even if you eliminate what makes you dissatisfied, that doesn’t make you motivated. It doesn’t make your work rewarding. You just are less bothered by things. » « 

Didier – Citizen of the World

(1) Professor Clayton Christensen, Management guru and Harvard Business School professor, has co-written « How Will You Measure Your Life?, » in which he applies business-school theories not to organizational management, but to finding happiness and integrity in life.

Is true business compatible with true sustainability ?

I participated on Septembre 21st, 2012 in Fontainebleau to the "28th Sustainability Executive Roundtable", organized by the Social Innovation Centre of INSEAD. The programme was focusing on "Sustainaibility and HR, challenges for the firm and its members". This...

Making use of people strengths

“The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on, so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values.” This is an excerpt from the article “Managing oneself” written by Peter F. Drucker in...

Diamond Mine

After the 4 weeks “Advanced Management Programme”, I feel that I found my Diamond Mine, my Library of Alexandria. Beyond the very interesting learning about economy, strategy, finance, marketing, management and leadership, I have learned about myself, how to improve...

Human being in Merger & Acquisition (M&A)

M&A is, I think, an useful way of making business. For example, because of the Renault-Nissan M&A, about 20.000 NISSAN employees lost their jobs and suppliers lost their major customers but overall this company which was in great danger before the M&A,...

Practice of meditation by “advanced managers”

We have learned last Saturday how to practice meditation. I asked then on Sunday and Monday to a lot of participants whether they started to practice. The answer was always “no”. 3 of them told me “ I practiced in the past but I stopped because I was too busy” …...

GDP and happiness

The following question was asked by one of the participants to the professor who was teaching us “Macroeconomic performance” : what is the link between the GDP of a country and the happiness of the citizens of this country ? In other words : do we need to increase the...

Context of the “Advanced Management” articles

These articles of the category “Advanced Management” are initiated during my 4 week training in INSEAD ( Fontainebleau – France ), one of the best business school in the world. We are 73 managers from 26 countries, from a wide range of businesses, facing about 12...