"A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures." (Peter F Drucker, "The Practice of Management", 1954)
"A manager [...] sets objectives [...] organizes [...] motivates and communicates [...] measure[s] [...] develops people. Every manager does these things - knowingly or not. A manager may do them well, or may do them wretchedly, but always does them." (Peter F Drucker, "People and Performance", 1977)
"The single most important task of a manager is to elicit peak performance from his subordinates. So if two things limit high output, a manager has two ways to tackle the issue: through training and motivation." (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)
"Training won't cover up for poor equipment and outmoded methods. It won't offset mediocre products or deteriorating markets. It won't compensate for poor compensation or abusive supervisory or management practices. And training definitely won't turn the unwilling and uncaring in your organization into motivated, devoted, gung-ho fireballs." (Ron Zemke, Training, 1986)
"The [quality control] issue has more to do with people and motivation and less to do with capital and equipment than one would think. It involves a cultural change." (Michael Beer, The Washington Post, 1987)
"Even when you have skilled, motivated, hard-working people, the wrong team structure can undercut their efforts instead of catapulting them to success. A poor team structure can increase development time, reduce quality, damage morale, increase turnover, and ultimately lead to project cancellation." (Steve McConnell, "Rapid Development", 1996)
"Mission statements should be inspirational. They should supply energy and motivation to the organization. But inspirational mission statements and slogans are not sufficient." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)
"Motivation is undoubtedly the single greatest influence on how well people perform. Most productivity studies have found that motivation has a stronger influence on productivity than any other factor."
"Organizations must know and understand the current organizational culture to be successful at implementing change. We know that it is the organization’s culture that drives its people to action; therefore, management must understand what motivates their people to attain goals and objectives. Only by understanding the current organizational culture will it be possible to begin to try and change it."
"Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by passion, generated by vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose." (Myles Munroe, "Charge: Finding the Leader Within You", 2008)
"Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you'll be stuck with whoever's left." (Simon Sinek, "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action", 2009)
"Teams should be able to act with the same unity of purpose and focus as a well-motivated individual." (Bill Gates, "Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy", 2009)
"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)
"Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occuring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it." (Nir Eyal, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products", 2014)
"Teams motivated by targets tend not to take ownership of problems. They attend only to those aspects that affect targets and leave the rest to be picked up by someone else. To some extent, the problem isn’t the target itself but rather the incentive behind the target." (Sriram Narayan, "Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery", 2015)
"Goals may cause systematic problems in organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization."
"Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself–your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers." (Dee Hock)
