Time For a New Cat Toy

​When motivation is required to keep going...

Motivation - the desire for someone to do something.  Incentive, inspiration, enthusiasm.  For Kevin,  motivation is easy.  Wait by the food dish in the kitchen until someone trips over him and remembers to feed him his kibbles.  His cat toy provides him with the motivation to play thus staying active.  The motivation for humans to work is also easy as most of us work for the basics needs; food, clothing, and shelter.  If you already have acquired the basic needs, then comparing yourself to the neighbours can motivate you to achieve or do more.  This is a less desirable motivation as it leaves you always wanting more and not accepting and experiencing contentment.

​Job satisfaction can be good for some lengths of time and then, not so good for other periods of time.  It is important for management to recognize these ups and downs.  When the team contentment levels are good, then management does their best to keep it that way.  However, full team contentment can't always be accomplished as people have external factors that can influence their work - relationships, kids, economy, health, etc..

​For a project team, there needs to be something that everyone is working towards as a group.  If individuals are working on various projects, then a common team goal.  There are smaller daily or weekly baby goals that can be discussed and decided by team members which are more individual.  These are not the same goals that management uses to review performance.  Baby goals are set by the individual and achieved with assistance when required by the project manager specific to their day-to-day roles.  Not everyone wants to set goals for themselves.  Pushing individuals that do not want to be pushed can create negative experiences for all.  You can't take motivation and try to stuff it into the souls of everyone.  You can, but you are usually an unbalanced individual or a sociopath.

​To hear an "inspiring" speech from the company CEO doesn't ignite motivation either.  After years of the office rallies and town hall presentations, we have all become immune to the lyrical words of upper management describing the company profit goals and direction.

​Negative Nellies are also motivation killers.  These are the managers who can only find fault and criticise the team and demoralizes everyone's attempt at work satisfaction.  When individuals are addicted to managers that they can never please, the motivation to excel is replaced by abuse.  This should be addressed by upper management and made apparent to the team that action has been taken to remove the abuse.

​Kevin is acting bored as Spring is coming and the birds are starting to chirp at him through the window.  However, it is still cold and he doesn't want to go outside.  His old cat toy doesn't get him off the chair and doing lunges as it once did.  He starts to knock objects of the computer desk as his way of telling me he isn't motivated by his toy anymore..  It is now time for a new cat toy to give him motivation.

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