The Five Laws of Social Project Management

  Estimating   Quality   Talent Management  

In his new bestseller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, author Daniel Pink teaches us that everything we think we know about what motivates us is wrong. He makes his case for business and education, but it’s clear that his ideas are a great fit for life in project-based organizations.

Pink describes a core concept of motivation called the four Ts; simply put, people want autonomy over their Tasks, Time, Team and Technique. When you take this autonomy away, you pay a big price. Limiting the four Ts results is the erosion of the most precious asset an organization has: intrinsic motivation. So if you want maximum motivation, then Pink says we have to give people autonomy over their 21^st century tasks.

But how do we do that? Well, the answer is not control through carrots and sticks as 20^th century wisdom would suggest. Incentives and disincentives have been proven to do more harm than good. I assert with confidence that there is no nastier (or misused) stick in a manager’s arsenal than a bad schedule. How many times have people been beaten up by a schedule that had no basis in reality? Bad schedules make for bad social contracts. Who is motivated by a schedule they do not believe in or have any ownership in? What pathological counter-measures have teams taken to avoid the implications of unrealistic planning? “Any and every coping …

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