Comments on: Why “Motivation by Pizza” Doesn’t Work

By: Sharing – Great article – Time for a new approach! | The Almighty Finance

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:51:33 +0000

[...] http://positivesharing.com/2006/12/why-motivation-by-pizza-doesnt-work/ [...]

By: Priacta

Priacta — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:32:33 +0000

Hi Alexander. I went through another post written by you titles “Happiness at work improves productivity” and absolutely loved it. You style of presenting ideas, personal opinions and using excerpts from relevant outside resources like books and podcasts is very effective. I don’t have to go back and read anything twice to relate it to the subsequent paragraph.
As for motivation, I think it’s the effort of managers to make their employees feel that they belong to the organization and what they do or don’t do does affect the achievement of goals. This feeling can grow inside employees when their skills and experience is genuinely acknowledged, they are assigned meaningful tasks, given requisite authority and held responsible for their work and appreciated for their good work or given feedback for not performing up to the mark.
When employees realize that their performance was low, they’ll take constructive feedback positively and feel that their professional growth and personal development is a cause of concern for the company.

By: West Coast

West Coast — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:22:40 +0000

To the first comment above:

I washed dishes to pay my way through school. I did a good job and was motivated through my academic progress while in that menial job. If a crappy job is the case, then the person should be focusing on the positives of that job and see it as a stepping stone to something more positive. This is the same motivation from an analyst wanting to become a senior analyst, a senior analyst wanting to become a lead analyst or a lead analyst wanting to become a manager. The focus would need to be on taking away the small positives for later use in moving themselves forward…

By: The Case for Incentives « I2I – Incentive Intelligence

The Case for Incentives « I2I – Incentive Intelligence — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:34:16 +0000

[...] my surfing I bounced against this post in the blog for Chief Happiness Officer. In the post the author included this diagram (click [...]

By: Incentives Pro & Con « I2I – Incentive Intelligence

Incentives Pro & Con « I2I – Incentive Intelligence — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 12:24:47 +0000

[...] to advance the thinking that rewards and incentives are bad things. Here is the original post on the Chief Happiness Officer blog that got me started on this path back in December of 2006. And here is my response to that [...]

By: Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster : Yagnaum

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:08:38 +0000

[...] 6: Happy people are way more motivated Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. I wrote about this in a previous post called Why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work. [...]

By: Trevor Elwell (Brand-Yourself.com)

Trevor Elwell (Brand-Yourself.com) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:25:37 +0000

After reading this article, I came across an article on Harrison Barnes’ blog titled “If My Boss Gets Mad at Me or I Get a Poor Review, Does This Mean I Should Look for a New Job?” His whole perspective is that nothing inspires change more than criticism. He says that if you don’t raise the bar on your employees and get them to jump over it, they will forever be underachievers. You might enjoy my comment, as I actually linked to this post in it! Here’s Harrison’s post:
http://www.aharrisonbarnes.com/if-my-boss-gets-mad-at-me-or-i-get-a-poor-review-does-this-mean-i-should-look-for-a-new-job/#comment-22520

By: The true motivation | Never Mind the Manager

The true motivation | Never Mind the Manager — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:46:00 +0000

[...] * Highly influenced by “why motivation by pizza doesent work” [...]

By: AP

AP — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 03:32:55 +0000

some companies have rules that promotes people every 2 years.

when people were promoted, they slack for a year before working hard again for the the next promotion. :d

By: Demotivated

Demotivated — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:59:13 +0000

Interesting article. I can personally testify to the importance of positive intrinsic motivation: despite working at a really great company, I have no control over the tasks I do (which mostly seem to be tedious things that no-one else wants to do, and no-one seems to care much when or if they even get done) and feel pretty much like a spare part that is barely even noticed. I really miss my old job, where the pay and benefits were less (although still perfectly adequate) but I had full ownership of the projects I was given to work on (which were interesting, too!) and felt like a useful member of the team.

I actually came across this article in my search for ways to motivate myself… I realise that I should probably just talk to my manager, but I know that the work I have to do needs to be done by someone, and the rest of my team is very busy – and besides, I do feel very lucky to be working at this company; it seems ungrateful to complain just because I find some of the work boring. Since all the positive extrinsic stuff we get here (freebies and such) is not connected to performance, I find them more demotivating than the converse: they pay me regardless, so I have very little reason to actually do the work I don’t like, besides the negative intrinsic guilt of not doing it (which is amplified because of the fantastic environment I have to do it in, but still doesn’t always seem to be enough)!

Sorry if this is a rather negative post for a positive sharing site… On a brighter note, this article has helped me figure out why I’m so demotivated, so thank you to the author and the other commenters. Now I just need to figure out how to make myself want to do the work I have to do :)