Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

“companies can improve their employees’ emotional well-being by shifting some of their budget for charitable giving so that individual employees are given sums to donate, leaving them happier even as the charities of their choice benefit.”12 In other words, handing individual employees control over how the organization gives back to the community m

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility BY JAMES P. CARSE

Then We Came to the End BY JOSHUA FERRIS

are noncontingent “now that” rewards, they avoid the seven deadly flaws of most corporate carrots. And because they come from a colleague, not a boss, they carry a different (and perhaps deeper) meaning. You could even say they’re motivating.

company’s revenue and profit in the next two years; levels of satisfaction among your customers; ideas for new products; and evaluations of your coworkers. If you’re smart, you’ll probably try to sell your product, serve your customers, help your teammates, and, well, do good work. When metrics are varied, they’re harder to finagle. In addition, th

He persuaded managers to configure work assignments so that employees had clear objectives and a way to get quick feedback. And instead of meeting with their charges for once-a-year performance reviews, managers sat down with employees one-on-one six times a year, often for as long as ninety minutes, to discuss their level of engagement and path to

Hand everyone a blank three-by-five-inch card. Then ask each person to write down his or her one-sentence answer to the following question: “What is our company’s (or organization’s) purpose?”

How much autonomy do the people in your organization really have? If you’re like most folks, you probably don’t have a clue. Nobody does. But there’s a way to find out—with an autonomy audit. Ask everyone in your department or on your team to respond to these four questions with a numerical ranking (using a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning “almost

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation BY EDWARD L. DECI WITH RICHARD FLASTE