What Motivates: Gold, Glory, or God?

Motivation comes in many forms, and knowing what motivates the people you work with can make all the difference from “has done” to “has been.”

Pay, or as the HR people like to say, compensation, has turned out not to be the end-all-be-all for motivational purposes. As Dan Pink has ably exposed in his latest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (and TED presentation here) research demonstrates that money in certain situations degrades, not improves, performance.… Read the rest

[Palm’s Employee Retention Handcuffs] Can They Stop the Exit Hemorrhaging?

Palm, the maker of mobile products, is losing talent.

Tech journalist Kara Swisher has commented that Palm is a company with nine lives. This, by my count, is number ten.

Michael Abbott, SVP of Software, and Caitlin Spaan, VP of Carrier Marketing, have both left Palm. Abbott landed at Twitter. SEC filings indicate that CFO Doug Jeffries and Global Operations Senior Vice President Jeff Devine both were paid $250K bonuses and provided stock options as part of a formal retention plan (bad news when a company’s CFO has to be paid more to stay).There’s … Read the rest

[Trick or Treat] The Trouble with Incentives

As a senior at Tigard High School, the Prom Queen was selected by a canned food competition between the three high school classes. The goal was to incent students to both show school spirit and bring in canned foods for people who were less fortunate and needed the food to eat to live.

Both competitive and adventuresome sorts, my class’ winning solution was to tin-cup class members for cash, and then ditch school to go buy canned foods at discount retailers that sold marred (but perfectly eatable) canned goods at a discount.Read the rest