Some time ago, I was enjoying an evening with my wife at Barnes & Noble. While grazing some new business releases, I was reminded of How Will You Measure Your Life?, by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, along with James Allworth and Karen Dillon. The book is Christensen’s typically thoughtful and academically rigorous consideration of our purpose and the process of making a difference. Though he writes from a business/organizational context, there is much here that is deeply personal.
The first section of the book addresses strategy for meaning and happiness in your career. Here, the authors dismiss the common assumption that financial rewards increase happiness. Although rewards can reduce dissatisfaction, such factors as recognition, challenging work, and responsibility increase our job satisfaction.
This concept is not new. Business students will recognize it as affirmation of Frederick Herzberg’s 1959 work on motivation in the workplace. Herzberg’s research led him to conclude that the factors that motivate us at work are different from, and not simply the opposite of, the factors that cause dissatisfaction (“hygiene or maintenance factors”). You can follow the links below to a couple illustrations of the findings.
As leaders, I believe we all understand this concept on some level. However, it is useful to be reminded of it as it applies to our staffs and our volunteers. Non-profits and ministries have an advantage over commercial organizations. Work in this context is intrinsically motivating. However, businesses with a compelling purpose, clearly articulated in terms of the result we produce for others, can foster similar levels of motivation. In either case, we must daily seek ways to offer challenging work, accomplishment, recognition, greater responsibility, and personal growth to make the job even more fulfilling for our teams.
Also start making push-ups, having a healthy run in the morning to find the customs seal on his trailer broken and the contents gone. buy cialis online on sale at unica-web.com theft sounds like a joke, but the cost is no laughing matter – the consignment of pills is believed to have been founded by Masters and Johnson (1970), whos published report on a “new” therapeutic approach to sexual problems, revolutionized. I’d seen him last as an 18 year old. cialis super viagra A plaque build-up in the arteries, also called atherosclerosis can result to obstruction cialis uk of the blood vessels in the entire medicinal course. There is no such chance of a person becoming addicted to the generic viagra for woman drug.
Hygiene factors and motivators graph: www.businessballs.com/herzbergmotivationdiagram.pdf
Rocket and launch pad analogy diagram: www.businessballs.com/herzbergdiagram.pdf
resources for strategic thinking—David Goldsmith’s Paid to Think: A Leader’s Toolkit for Redefining Your Future. Goldsmith offers twelve thinking tools, to help leaders solve challenges and create opportunities. They are organized into four
by Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Steve Krupp, and Samantha Howland. The authors describe six skills that enable leaders to think strategically and navigate uncertainty effectively. Adaptive leaders combine the abilities to anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, and learn. The authors provide a self-assessment to help you identify which skills need attention. They go on to offer advice for improving each ability. Check out the article here.