Moving Motivators

Coming from the management 3.0, the Moving Motivators allow everyone to identify their motivation levers and the way changes in the organization of the company can affect them. Developed by the author and the leader of the Management 3.0 Jurgen Appelo, this card game is based on 10 intrinsic motivations and issued from Edward Deci and Steven Reiss research.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

What is the extrinsic motivation? The action is provoked by external circumstances such as rewards (salary, bonus) or even social pressures, punishments, the approbation by outsiders…

What is the intrinsic motivation? The actions are provoked by the personal interest without waiting for external rewards.

What are the 10th intrinsic motivators?

  Jurgen Appelo offers a definition from each of them, but everyone can have its own definition. If we do the exercise of the Moving Motivators it’s important to take some time so everyone can share its interpretation in order to have the team agree on a common vision.

• Curiosity: I need to constantly discover new things.
• Expertise: I need to control what I do and to feel competent.
• Interaction: I need to have good relations and exchange regularly with others.
• Liberty: I need to dispose of a certain liberty in my actions and taking initiatives.
• Order: I need to evolve in a structured environment and with well-defined rules.
• Power: I need to have influence on my environment.
• Reconnaissance: I need from the people around me to approve what I do and who I am.
• Sense: I need my work to have meaning.
• Status: I need a post that brings a certain social status.
• Values: I need that my personal values reflect themselves in the way I work.

The moving motivators can be played alone or as a team.

Interest of the moving motivators

  Get to know yourself better and get to know your collaborators better. Adjust the way you of communicating and to managing your team. Define the commons values of your team, its strengths and weaknesses. Take decisions for yourself (Is this news position, this news mission is right for me?) or for the team (Should we change the way we operate?). Follow up with your team, as a feedback tool At Extia, we also us them during job interview, creating a conversation with our candidates!

How do you do the Moving motivator exercise solo?

  1.Take the time to discover each card. You can find them in our empower’ me handbook. 2.Define which motivations are important for you. Rank them from 1 to 10. With 1 being the least important motivation to 10 being the most important. 3.Then imagine a professional change: a team reorganization, a news project… and determine how this change would affect your motivations. If the change is positive, place an up arrow facing the corresponding motivation. If the change is negative, place a down arrow. The changes do not necessarily apply to all cards.

A new project will certainly affect your status in a positive way, but also can affect negatively your expertise. The Moving Motivators solo will allow you to take decision, understand what is important in your relationship to work and get to know yourself better.

How do you do the Moving motivator exercise in pairs or in teams?

  Playing with the Moving Motivators as a team allows you to get an overview of everyone’s motivations and to obtain a map of the team to better understand you.

That requires a set of cards per participant. We will agree that everyone on the team is involved in the exercise, including managers!

1.Each player reads the cards. (5 minutes) 2.Place the cards in front of you and order them from the least important on the left to the most important on the right. (5 to 10 minutes) 3.The players place their cards on a table or a wall. Everyone is free to explain and justify their ranking, but also to give their own interpretation of the cards. (15 minutes) 4.We then ask ourselves the following question: “In our current organization, are there elements that activate or deactivate certain motivations. Everyone then takes the time to lower or raise certain cards, but above all to explain why this change of state.