Motivation - an Addendum

Yesterday after posting my blub on “motivation” I was leafing through some of the publications that seem to accumulate around here and came across a back issue of “Leader to Leader”(number 44, Spring ’07).  The title of one of the articles, “Leadership starts with you,” naturally caught my eye.  It is an article by Ray Davis, the CEO of Umpqua Holdings, the parent company of South Umpqua State Bank in Oregon.  Ray and his bank have been featured in numerous publications including Fast Company and on CNBC.  He notes that the articles sometimes characterize the company as “quirky” or “cool” as they describe how it broke away from the competitive pack and embarked on 12 years of continuous growth  -  from $140 million in assets to more than $7 billion.  Among Ray’s comments is this gem:   “Umpqua is significant: it matters in the lives of the people who work here, in the lives of our customers, and in our communities. …. That is what matters to me, not size.”  Those words neatly capture the essence of what I was trying to say in that blog pasting yesterday.

Comments

[Hector Falcon (Duke MEM Program)]

Certainly the topic about motivation has been one of the most interesting ones so far. The fact that currently companies in Venezuela lack of it, makes it not only interesting, but the factor of differentiation that could give my future company the edge to brake through and be successful. Understanding that the company MUST be percieved as different and better, mean a great challenge in terms of having a correct strategy towards a corporate culture based on trust and meaning of the work being done. Civil engineerring, in my case could definitely be driven towards social benefit and impact towards the lower classes.
I appreciatted all I have learn so far, thanks for the time spent in class with us.
Regards,
Hector Falcon

[Joannah]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Joannah

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[jgo]

Last week, I was reading Greenberg's _Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion_. Government funding of R&D has been increasing right along, especially at NIH, through several bouts of lobbying hysteria. The question is whether firms' investments in their employees (training & relo in particular) have been keeping up as bodyshopping has sky-rocketed. Even CDC in the late 1980s was cutting back, diverting employees from substantial classes to fluff. Haven't heard more from 3M's intrapreneurship efforts since 1987. In software project estimates, scheduling time and resources for the necessary and unpredictable numbers of cycles of experimentation is unheard of, and long days with the occasional 30-hour crunch shift are still the norm. Creativity suffers. (But one has to soldier on. Today, I'm polishing off Thomas Sowell's _Intellectuals & Society_.)