Find the rights levers of motivation with the "Moving Motivators"

In my company, we have decided to start building a new offer based on volunteering. One of the main starting point is to understand why each of us has decided to be part of this new offer. That’s why I propose to use Moving Motivators, a Management 3.0’s game described by Jurgen Appelo in his book: Managing for Happiness.

The motivation is divided into two categories:

Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do something because of an interest in the topic or enjoyment in the task itself. Extrinsic motivation is the need to do something to achieve an outcome that is desired by something or someone outside of the individual and obtained by offering rewards or dealing out punishments.







According to Jurgen Appelo’s book, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is useful but rather simplistic. That’s why, he proposes his CHAMPFROGS!
CHAMPFROGS is the acronym for the 10 motivators described by Jurgen Appelo:

• Curiosity – People have a variety of things to investigate and to think about.
• Honor – People feel proud that their values are reflected in how they work.
• Acceptance – Colleagues approve of what they do and who they are.
• Mastery – Their work challenges their competence, but it is within their abilities.
• Power – There’s enough room for them to influence what happens in the world.
• Freedom – People are independent of others with their work and responsibilities.
• Relatedness – People have fulfilling social contacts with others in their work.
• Order – There are enough rules and policies for a stable environment.
• Goal – Their purpose in life or need for direction is reflected in the work.
• Status – Their position is good and is recognized by the people they work with.

Step 1 – Introduce Moving Motivators

First of all, you have to evaluate “What motivates you?” This question could be too vague and abstract to answer. Fortunately, the 10 cards (motivators) simplify the game and a discussion about motivation suddenly becomes a lot easier.
So, I have introduced Moving Motivators to my team by describing the cards.

Step 2 – Be the first!

Secondly, I have started myself to classify the 10 cards from the less valuable (left) to the most valuable (right) from my own analysis.
Of course, I’ve explained to my team the order that I gave to the cards.

Step 3 – Launch the team

During this step, each member of the team has classified his own cards for himself by answering the question: “What motivates me?”
After a few minutes, we’ve done a round table and everybody highlighted the most and the less valuable motivators and explained why he/she classified them here.

Tip: Precise to the team, to let the cards in front of them after the exercise (as there is another step coming).

Step 4 – Time to change

At this step, you have to imagine a change or event that would have an impact on your motivation.
As we are working on a new offer, we simply imagine that our offer was a success and that we closed the project and move in run mode with this new offer. This change could have a huge impact on our day to day work.
I’ve asked for the team to imagine the impact of this change on their 10 motivators. The rule is simple: when the impact is positive, move the card up; when the impact is negative, move the card down.

Step 5 – Evaluate

Well, when all is done, you just have to evaluate the results! A visual analysis is to use radar. It’s quite visual and can be printed to be stuck on a wall after the game.

Tip: I just use Microsoft Excel to generate the radar based on the classification given by my team.

Conclusion

The Moving Motivators game allows us to understand how to increase our global motivation and prioritizing activities directly linked to our motivators.
Furthermore, each one of us, understand how the others think and what motivates him/her.
For sure, this game has to be spread and I’ll certainly reuse it as soon as possible!