Killing Motivation #6: Constant Unneccessary Change

In my experience a simple productivity killer is to make your employee's work environment behave like Carol's bedroom scene in Poltergeist  

However in this case we are not talking about furniture in the cube farm, we are talking about the computing environment, the tools, the things you need from the local network to do your job.

If that environment is changing on a weekly basis, with new rules, locations, services, and whatever so that you have to relearn and reconfigure everything constantly, then how in Gaia's name are you going to get anything done? You will spend all your time fighting with the environment....or the so-called corporate Poltergeist.

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, you would get sick and tired?

So much that you might want to leave.....oh wait. And if this happen enough then the corporation doesn't have to pay severance because you left of your own volition. 

So this is really a cheap way to lay off the employees you call "little people" without being forced to pay a severance: Make their world such a living hell that they make the move you wanted.

Killing Motivation #5 - Software Building

I don't know what it is, but software developers like to build stuff. Its like a wasting disease. When you are in a small group its pretty easy. But when that group of developers (a gaggle of software developers, a nerd of software developers?) is quite large then centralized build mechanism are "a la mode".

Which is great if you want to demotivate a large group in one fell swoop.

To demotivate en masse you need to create a fragile build environment. The build will fail, daily, and not because a developer made an error, but because the environment that performs that build fails. Fails early......fails often.

And of course, to the sound of a scythe cutting down its victim, the build system will send a message, a form of Dr. Goebbels propaganda, telling everyone that the build failed. It will do this so much that the nerd (plural, as in herd) will suggest that the build system should only send a message when it succeeds, since the obvious default value is #FAIL. 

The build fails, frequently, because of server issues, disk issues (buy cheap small disks that fill up quickly), power issues, and network issues. The list can go on because the de-motivating organization while have missed no chance to miss a chance.

Killing Motivation #4: Bad Toolsets

My Uncle once told me that to help you do the job right, and to do it efficiently, you need to have the right quality tools. He never skimped on the cost of the tools he used and he achieved success in his craft. The result was that he saved several times over the cost of his tools in the time it took him to complete a task. In addition, he had a committed clientele.

By contrast, one clear way to demotivate a worker in any field it to force them to use poor quality tools.

Let say you are too cheap to provide your employees with quality tools. They want to do the job right and they want to do it quickly. So to turn them into frustrated venting sociopaths you must force them to use bad tools.

One good way to do this is to make your own. Some people call this "eating your own dogfood" but you can play with their minds by calling it "drinking your own champagne". What it really is, and you know this, is "eating your own shit". Make sure the staff making those tools are given poor tools, have little resources, and have to sit in broken chairs. Make sure that  this group suffers several layoffs.

Make sure those internal tools are buggy, with user interfaces that would thrill the mentally deranged. Make sure the user interface looks like the cockpit of a Saturn V rocket. Ensure that these tools work and do not work at random times. Also, and this is a special thrill, force your employees to use these tools to complete a task in an aggressive time frame and then make it complex to even get access to the tool.

If its a software tool, make it hard to find to download. Make sure they need an "internal use license" that expires quickly. Also make it near impossible to get that license. Hide access to that license with a web page that you move around or just plain does not work. Do not tell people how to use this site. Provide a link for "support" for the license site in case your staff encounter the inevitable problems - but make sure the link is dead or the support site is even more complex than the site they are seeking support on. If they do happen to have the tenacity to get access to support, that support should deny them any help because they are "internal" and not a paying customer. If they happen to actually get a license, change the procedure each time between license lifetimes so nothing they learned the first time cannot be applied on any subsequent attempt.

You may think that this is random stuff made up from a poorly cast Tim Burton film. But this is exactly what happens where I work.