My beliefs for employees

I love managing teams, because I see each team member as another opportunity to positively affect someone's life. This list outlines a few of the key areas which I feel make work a special place for my employees.

I believe employees should...

• Feel empowered. Autonomy enables people and ideas to flourish without limits.
• Be challenged. Too easy is boring.
• Continuously learn. Mastery and feeling like you are growing in skills or knowledge is extremely rewarding.
• Have a purpose. Working on projects with meaning, significance, and positive impact.
• Feel safe to speak up. Open dialogue; all ideas are always welcome.
• Be creative. 100% planned = 0 innovation. Employees need space to have their best ideas come through.
• Understand why. See the whole picture and how work aligns to broader goals and strategy.
• Ask questions. No such thing as stupid questions. Challenge status quo.
• Leverage strengths. I believe in maximizing strengths, not zeroing in on development needs.
• Have fun. Smile, laugh, and be kind to each other. Work will not always be 100% fun, but it does not hurt to try. Why not have ice cream parties every Friday afternoon? :)

What motivates us

Daniel Pink challenges the conventional way of thinking about motivation. He points to research demonstrating larger rewards do not necessarily lead to better performance for tasks involving conceptual and creative thinking.

So what does motivate us?

Autonomy
No one likes a micro-manager. When things are 100% planned it equates to zero innovation. Self-direction, on the other hand, drives engagement.

Software company Atlassian provides developers 24 hours once a quarter to work on whatever they want, however they want. The only thing they must do is show their results to the company at the end of the 24 hours. This quarterly event has produced many new products, bug fixes, and productivity improvements which may never have emerged otherwise.

Mastery
Why do people play musical instruments? I learned to play the piano after college, not because I was getting paid for it (I wasn't), but because I enjoyed doing it and seeing my progress along the way.

Open source projects are another example here (think Wikipedia or Linux). Contributors to these projects do not get paid, many already have jobs, but challenge and mastery spark their desire to contribute.

Purpose
We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. This goes hand-in-hand with my post about the power of "why."

Skype's founder said, "Our goal is to be disruptive, but in the cause of making the world a better place." That is quite a purpose to get up and go to work for every day.

It is important to note that money is in fact a motivator. If you pay someone too little, that can be severely de-motivating. Pay someone enough to get the issue of money off the table and they can focus solely on their work.