…and literally every single one was full of people who love to work hard. The simple reason for that shared trait is that all of those teams were comprised of groups of people with a few key things in common:

  • A clearly understood goal
  • A common set of values in pursuit of that goal
  • Permission to follow their own ideas to achieve their goal
  • Trust and responsibility to be accountable to one another

It is genuinely one of the best feelings in life to be completely exhausted while sitting next to someone who’s been right beside you, shoulder to shoulder, fighting to accomplish the same goal. I’ve known that to be true whether we were launching a new company into the world, campaigning to get a candidate we believed in elected, organizing to rally people around an issue, raising funds for an important cause, or even just trying to get people together for a big event or party.

Every time, the feeling of being soul-tired next to folks who you know you can trust because they showed up and worked their asses off just like you did, is among the most motivating and inspiring things you can experience. Nobody who’s ever been lucky enough to have had a moment like that could ever think that people “don’t want to work”.

Source: Actually, people love to work hard

Anil Dash nails the feeling of a motivated team working hard.

But perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned from watching great teams work is that the cynical, toxic view of people’s intrinsic motivations and work ethic that we hear so often is a damnable lie. Most people are tireless and brave and brilliant in the work they do, when it’s work that has purpose and passion. Anyone who tells you otherwise is telling on themselves, and revealing their own lack of imagination and vision about what it’s possible for people to create together.

People take pride in working hard. However, people burn out when they are working hard to either balance their own values with the organization or the project’s. They also burn out because of awful communication and strategy decisions from “the top” that they have no way to improve, control, etc.

This is my experience to the t. You might think this is antithetical to my advice - Know Who You Are to Play the Organizational Game.

However, you can hold two thoughts at once. I am fortunate to have seen this action - not once, not twice, but three different times in my career. It’s one of the best feelings when you work hard and the mission succeeds - there really are very few feelings like it.

However, I also have seen the other side when leaders fail, including myself, when I’ve burned myself and the people reporting to me. So, when we hear about AI productivity, I want everyone to keep an open mind about this - most people will adopt tools that make their job better, easier, and more meaningful.

Most people won’t happily adopt tools that make them productive. Productivity is a metric often not used by the person doing the job but by someone else evaluating it.