Dan Pink's TED Talk on Motivating People
It’s incredibly reassuring to hear that there’s hard scientific evidence to support what I’ve believed for most of my professional career – the best way to motivate people who solve problems is to make them feel like what they do actually matters and will, at least in some small way, make the world a better place.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
A shorter (and more visual) variant is available on YouTube:
It’s interesting that he mentions Atlassian in his talk.
Personally, I apply this to my own work by thinking of our product as a way to help teams deliver better software. If the issue of money wasn’t a factor, what would get you out of bed in the morning?
Jim