L'art de (se) diriger ( le blog de Laurent Pellegrin)

Teresa Amabile (HBS) and Steven Kramer (a developmental psychologist) are the co-authors of The Progress Principle. They collected confidential diaries from 238 professionals in seven companies, each day for several months. Those diaries described nearly 12000 days - how people felt and events that stood out.

1/3 of those 12000 days, the person writing the diary was either unhappy at work, demotivated by the work, or both.

And they discovered - what a surprise - that the key factor you can use to make employees miserable on the job is simply to keep them from making progress in meaningful work.

That's pretty efficient work life demolition, but it leaves rooms for improvement :

• Step 1 : Never allow pride of accomplishment;
• Step 2 : Miss no opportunity to block progress on employees' projects;
• Step 3 : Give yourself some credit;
• Step 4 : Kill the messengers.