Motivation is THE core of the successful projects

I’ve worked with and been a part of many teams. The teams were composed of many different individuals with a lot of differences in behaviors and opinions. I was always curious why certain projects succeeded and why failed. I’ve concluded that the success or failure can not be contributed to a lack of experience or expertise of people, in average companies are hiring more or less equally skilled teams, but it was directly correlated to how the teams were motivated. Especially how the individuals on the teams were motivated and passionate about what they do.

I’ve spent a great deal of research on how to “cultivate” the motivation and passion. My experience showed that it is possible but very complicated in our corporate structures with the existing management structures, tight schedules, estimates and reward/punishment feedbacks.

The best confirmation to my thoughts and certain solutions to the problem at hand I found in the amazing and dynamic TED presentation by Daniel H. Pink (below). He is a great writer, blogger and a speaker with 4 books under his belt.

In this presentation he says that – “Self Direction Works Better”. We have to “Maximize Purpose Not Profit”.

To increase the motivation and the passion of our teams and team members we need to cultivate:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

Only the ROWE (Results only Work Environment) companies produce more successful projects.

Some of the successful examples of these theories are: Wikipedia, Google, Atlassian, etc…

I loved this presentation and I highly advise to everyone to check it out:

There is also an animate version of this talk done by RSA. If you like more visual presentations check this one out: