In the context of our daily work as product leaders understanding peoples' needs; designing, building and scaling products, services and business models; and designing, managing and scaling teams, the idea of motivation comes up a lot.

My intent is to highlight some of my beliefs about motivation so that others can challenge them and I can learn from others and so that people who work with me know where I am coming from.

Motivation is about wanting

Whilst academics are busy cooking up a grand theory of motivation, let's define what we mean and where we encounter the term.

• She is highly motivated to perform
• He seemed demotivated today
• The team is not motivated
• The recent management changes demotivated the team
• I am not motivated.

From the language alone we can determine that:

• Motivation is a state that individuals and groups can attain
• It can apply positively (motivated) and negatively (demotivated)
• It is impacted by external factors.

From the psychology literature I will add that motivation can also be internally impacted. Putting this together I will summarise motivation as being: