(Kathy Sierra suggested this book, and references it in Badass)

overall - OMG I love this book and I won't shut up about it. It completely confirms my belief that a manager job is to support and enable your people. (and none of the in text statistics talk made me cringe, but I'm not reading the appendix just in case)

Two bits that made me go running for post-its:
"How do you know when you have made progress?" is a sidebar about not just getting feedback from people, but setting up things like test suites that can give someone feedback without waiting for another human. I am v intrigued by the possibilities here.
Peter Drucker quote "The goal of management is to make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual." and then
"In Drucker's view, a manager's job is to server employees by ensuring that their needs for challenging work and satisfying work lives are fulfilled" ( )

I don't read a lot of management books from cover-to-cover. I skim or read summaries. Many of them are somewhat repetitive or are based on weak evidence. But The Progress Principle is one of the best management books I've read lately. Amabile and Kramer asked 238 people on 26 project teams to complete daily surveys in which they rated their motivations, emotions, and perceptions and shared an event that happened that day. Based on analysis of this huge data set, Amabile and Kramer share some key findings, including the progress principle - making progress on meaningful work has the biggest positive impact on moods, motivation, and perceptions. Using stories from the teams they studied, they discuss how managers can support progress and uplift the people doing the work. They also provide some tips about how you can boost your motivation and mood by tracking your progress daily. Not only did I learn a lot from this book that I will share in my classes, but it also made me think about what I can do to make my work more motivating and enjoyable. It is rare to find a management book that is both evidence-based and highly readable, but The Progress Principle succeeds at both. ( )

Employee engagement and morale decline again.
Few anticipate their jobs will be a source of satisfaction.
Something big is going on. The Progress Principle is key to understanding it.

When your employees’ major output is intellectual (and this book is based primarily on knowledge workers) why do people give of their intellectual energy, creativity, and passion? Based upon 12,000 diary entries by workers in several businesses coded for perceptive, emotional, and motivational content, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer uncover the answer.

First, workplace motivation must be internal. They call it the internal work life. Motivation comes from nourishing that internal work life resulting in happy workers.

How do we best nourish internal work life? With small wins, by making progress, even small progress, in meaningful work.
How do we kill it? With setbacks, inhibitors and toxins.

One of the issues this brings up for leaders is organizational bounds within which we create a protected environment of trust and collaboration and the boundary at which that turns to competition. Some leadership writers have advocated a very competitive environment where trust ends and competition begins at your skin. The evidence here, however, is that creating a more trusting, nourishing environment of collaboration results in improved work output. It may be the most important reason organizations exist.

The book left me with this bigger question: why are the actions of most managers instinctively harmful in this new environment? They persist with inappropriate motivators that have been shown to lower creativity output. They have been brought up on the idea that being a leader means turning others into followers, and this just doesn’t work. For more, see leader-leader.org. ( )