A good article, but it is unfortunate that it starts by categorically slamming all authors who write about employee motivation and retention:
It’s written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don’t have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they’ve either never done the work or have forgotten how it’s done.
Why is this necessary? I find it nauseating. In fact, when I read or hear someone who basically states “everyone is stupid but me, and all who have come before me have been doing it wrong” in their opening spiel, it’s a good sign to me that the speaker/author has some blind spots and may not be considering all perspectives.
Maybe one reason I find it so nauseating is because I have suffered from this myself, and I’m still tempted at times to point out where others have failed and where I’m so much smarter. (After all, “we judge most harshly in others that which we are most guilty of ourselves” – can’t remember who said that.) It wasn’t until a close mentor confronted me on it, and basically taught me that life goes a lot better when you don’t walk around thinking you are smarter than everyone else. Biggest reason? It shows. You may think you are hiding it, but your face may be wearing a subtle smirk while others are talking, and they can see in your eyes that you aren’t listening but instead are formulating a rebuttal.
Steve Blank teaches this same concept (i.e. don’t think you are smarter than everyone else) in some of his blogs, although more related to sales. And good articles like this on the importance of humility reinforce this for me:
http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2011/07/why-some-people-have-all-t...
In a Fortune article on “the best advice I ever got”, the CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi said the best advice she ever received was from her father, who taught her to “always assume positive intent” which I have found gets you a lot further than “assume everyone is an idiot”, which has been the stance of many programmers I have met. (Fortune article link: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bes...),
I’ve heard it said that “people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their manager”. Maybe in IT we are boring people by ceasing every opportunity to show our underlings how smart we are…
*Edit: Typos