www.create-learning.com Making Progress motivates workers? How you can create a system of small wins and progress to increase motivation and creativity. Of these five workplace factors which do you think has the greatest impact on motivation of employees? Recognition; Incentives; Interpersonal Support; Support for Making Progress; Clear Goals The results of a multi-year study of hundreds of knowledge workers show that what most managers believe, they ranked Recognition as the greatest factor, is wrong. The greatest factor for motivation and innovation of employees is Support for Making Progress (The Progress Principle; Amabile 2011). People are most satisfied with their jobs (and therefore most motivated) when those jobs give them the opportunity to experience achievement. You will leave this workshop with: · Seven Catalysts managers can use to support progress in work. · Steps for ‘small wins’ to increase the creativity and motivation of employees. · Two specific things individuals can do to improve their inner work lives and increase their chances of making progress on meaningful work.

1. Making progress
motivates workers?
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2. Progress lives everyday, not
just in quarterly reports or
milestone checkpoints.
And building a great
organizational climate
happens through everyday
words and actions, not
through a series of major
one-time initiatives.
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3. Leaders need to be
aware of how they rob
meaning from
peoples’ work.
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4. 1. Dismiss someone’s ideas
2. Make employees doubt the work
they do is important
3. Assign people to work for which
they are overqualified
4. Keep people from assuming full
ownership of their work
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5. Most people have strong intrinsic motivation
to do their work, at least early in their
careers. That motivation exists and
continues, until something gets in the way.
This has a startling implication:
as long as the work is meaningful, managers
do not have to spend time coming up with
ways to motivate people to do that work.
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6. Inner Work Life System
Perceptions / Emotions /
thoughts feelings
Workday (Sensemaking about (Reaction to workday Individual
events workday events) events)
Performance
The Organization Positive emotions
Managers, team, self Negative emotions
The work Overall mood
Sense of
accomplishment
Motivation / drive
(Desire to do the work)
What to do
How to do it
When to do it
Amabile & Kramer 2011 . Whether to do it
The Progress Principle
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7. The power of setbacks to diminish
happiness is more than twice as strong
as the power of progress to boost
happiness.
The power of setbacks to increase
frustration is more than three times as
strong as the power of progress to
decrease frustration.
Page 92.
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8. If the setback resulted simply from the
difficult nature of the work itself, negative
inner work life turned positive as people
began to overcome the challenge, either on
their own or with help.
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9. Catalysts on Inner
Work Life
Catalysts
Positive inner
Progress Events supporting work life
the work
Because the progress loop continues unless interrupted
by some negative event, catalysts have continuing
positive effects on inner work life.
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10. Setting cl ear goals.
now
whe n they k
work lives ters.
better inner nd wh y it mat
People have k is heading a
wor
where their
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11. Setting clear
goals can
backfire if it
amounts to
nothing more
than telling
people what to
do and how to
do it.
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12. Providing Resources
Lavish resources aren’t required, but access to necessary
equipment, funding, data, materials, and personnel is.
Providing resources: 1. allows employees to envision
success on a project; 2. Signifies the organization values
what they are doing.
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13. Giving enough time – but not too much
If managers regularly set impossibly short time-frames or impossibly high workloads, employees
become stressed, unhappy, and unmotivated – burned out.
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14. Help with the work
In modern organizations, people
need each other; almost
everyone works
interdependently.
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15. Learning from problems and successes.
No matter how skilled people are, or how well designed and well executed their project,
problems and failures are inevitable in complex, creative work. Work improves when
people can determine ways to overcome and learn from them.
Successes matter, even small ones; People lose motivation when success is ignored,
or when its true value is questioned.
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16. Allowing ideas to flow
People have some of their best days at work when ideas
about projects flowed freely within the team and across
the organization.
Ideas flowed best when managers listened to workers,
encouraged vigorous debate of diverse perspectives,
and respected constructive critiques – even of
themselves.
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17. Daily Progress Checklist
Progress Setbacks
Which 1 or 2 events today indicated a small win and / or Which 1 or events indicated either a small setback or a
a breakthrough? (Describe briefly) possible crisis? (Describe briefly)
Did the team have clear short and long team goals for Was there any confusion regarding long or short term
meaningful work? goals for meaningful work?
Did the team members have sufficient autonomy to solve Were team members overly constrained in their ability
problems and take ownership or project? to solve problems and feel ownership of the project?
Did they have all the resources they needed to move Did they lack any resources they needed to move
forward effectively? forward effectively?
Did they have sufficient time to focus on meaningful Did they lack sufficient time to focus on meaningful
work? work?
Did I give or get them help when needed or requested? Did I fail to provide needed or requested help?
Did I encourage team members to help one another?
Did I discuss lessons from today’s successes and Did I “punish” failure, or neglect to find lessons and
problems with my team? opportunities in problems and successes?
Did I help ideas flow freely within the group? Did I or others cut off the presentation or debate of
ideas prematurely?
Amabile & Kramer 2011 . The Progress Principle www.create-learning.com

18. Progress Setbacks
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19. Progress lives everyday, not just in
quarterly reports or milestone
checkpoints.
And building a great organizational
climate happens through everyday
words and actions, not through a
series of major one-time initiatives.
Managers can’t help but influence
subordinates’ inner work lives; the
only question is how. That’s why, if
you are a manager, a review of your
people’s progress should become a
daily discipline. This is how you
sweat the small stuff that can have
magnified effects on inner work life.
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20. M
m ak
ot i n
iv g
at p
es ro
w gre
or s
ke s
rs
.
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21. Images in order of appearance
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenirah/3423920296/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5296559285/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alyssafilmmaker/3600372591/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daquellamanera/355061741/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31878512@N06/3904638720/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usefulguy/226362564/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuttlefish/3845733822/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/3572350703/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramus/3249196137/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/krikit/2657180934/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfajane/5112023570/
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