The Motivational Poster Problem

How do you actually inspire growth in a person, I.e. an employee?

I think motivational posters (see picture above) are a little bit of a throwback/relic to the working environments of the 1960s, but the spirit of them lives on today. Typically, this happens in memes that people send around on work email threads, oftentimes on Friday afternoons. (Someday, in the distant future, people may pull their head out of their posterior about how to most effectively use Friday afternoons at work. That day is not this Friday.)

When I talk about “motivational posters,” then, what I mean is this: we have an entire industry around how to motivate others. Frankly, most of the advice is trite bullshit cooked up by thought leaders. I’m not necessarily knocking this, either: as you rise up a management chain, you are typically most beholden to growth. A lot of people can’t see the difference between “individuals growing” (i.e. being motivated) and “the bottom line growing” (i.e. “I get a fatter bonus”). This is just one of the ways that management is not intuitive for a lot who become managers.

Same deal: you know how executives love to mention their “core values” in speeches, then often never act on a single one of them? That’s another new-school version of old-school motivational posters. Tack something on the…