This month at Ruly we have been exploring motivation. Below is a summary of this month’s blog posts highlighting some of my favorite comments and news updates.

We started off the month with a Ruly Challenge to complete a motivation worksheet helping you work through your available time, resources and to do list.

Lou commented:

“Okay, I did the list first and was able to cross off a thing or two just by writing it down!”

I found the same thing. Sometimes by just taking a few minutes to pause and think about what you need to do makes you realize that you are agonizing over something that you don’t need to. I also found that you have less guilt about not accomplishing something if you realize that you just don’t have the time or money to be doing that anyway.

Business Turnarounds and Comebacks

We looked to the business world for information on staging a business comeback. First, we looked at Steve Miller’s book, The Turnaround Kid and found 4 lessons for his comeback process: organize, simplify, focus on your biggest problem and create a plan with help from others.

Next, we took lessons on motivation from Harry Paul and Ross Peck’s Instant Turnaround whose simple but powerful philosophy is to surround yourself in a positive work environment with constant recognition and praise

Next, we looked to Donald Trump, the comeback master and created a top 10 list of Trump tips from his 1997 classic The Art of the Comeback. Wall Street Journal reporter John Newport recently challenged Donald Trump to a round of golf with prizes depending on who won the match (a signed “hedcut” image from the Wall Street Journal for Mr. Trump or a Trump-recorded cell phone message for Mr. Newport’s daughter). Mr. Trump won the match but generously offered to record a message for Mr. Newport’s 15-year-old daughter’s cell phone. His message shows the sort of confidence, generosity and fun that Mr. Trump exemplifies:

“This is Donald Trump, you’re calling Anna Belle. She’s a great beauty, she’s a fantastic young woman, she’s brilliant. If you want to speak to her, just leave your number and maybe you’ll be lucky enough for her to call you back. Good luck!”

–Donald Trump, quoted in John Paul Newport’s “Trading Shots with Donald Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2010

When it comes to motivating employees, a reader sent me a link to this interesting video illustrating a speech by Dan Pink at the RSA. The artistry is beautiful to watch but even more interesting is the point that when it comes to work requiring advanced cognitive processing, more money produces worse performance rather than better! What does motivate? You will have to watch to see.

Disaster Recovery

From the business world, we looked to disaster recovery lessons from the BP gulf coast oil spill and to Haiti’s earthquake recovery process.

Unfortunately, things still seem to be getting worse for BP. The oil spill continues to flow and, according to Tony Hayward’s Congressional testimony on June 17, likely won’t be stopped until August! I didn’t watch all of the testimony but the portion I did watch showed that our Congressional representatives put an incredible amount of effort into researching the specifics of oil drilling and operations. I was a bit surprised to hear all the detailed questions about oil well construction.

We now have a few more clues to the mystery of who owns MC252. According to The Washington Post, in addition to BP’s 65% interest, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., an American company, owns 25% and the remaining 10% is owned by “a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co. Ltd. of Japan.” From the Congressional testimony, we also understand that Haliburton was somehow involved in the drilling operations as well.

Given the resources of the many companies involved in this accident, I am fully confident that the victims of the oil spill will be fully compensated in time for these tremendous losses and that the gulf coast will be eventually cleaned up to a near pristine condition but I also sympathize that in the short-term many people are facing a difficult transition and are financially and emotionally devastated.

Just viewing BP’s website, it seems that their people are hard at work to both kill the well flow and clean up the environment but starting to tire a bit from the stress of this operation. I hope that BP is taking steps to motivate these people and recognize their hard work. We are all depending on them!

Genetic Factors of Motivation

We also discussed two aspects of motivation that are more genetic based and perhaps out of our control: personality traits such as auditory-sequential versus visual-spatial learners and mental illnesses such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Spreading Motivation

We looked at Alexandra Penney’s book, The Bag Lady Papers, discussing her own recovery process from the Bernie Madoff scandal and found tips to support family and friends struggling financially.

Danny Stewart-Smith provided a great Ruly Mix to motivate us and discussed his own experiences with motivation.

Ruly Ruth discussed the politics of group motivation and encouraged us all to join a group.

I hope that this month has given you a boost in motivation as well as insight into what motivates you and others.

Please check back on Friday for the start of a new month and a new theme!