Performance Incentives To Increase Motivation; Potentials Of Meaningful Activities In Project Management

Performance incentives to increase motivation; potentials for meaningful activities in project management, the author will concretize this with meaningful activities in project management. The ideal project leader is described by Mark Twain in his novel “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (Twain, 1876) in the episode of Tom Sawyer painting the fence. Tom is able to motivate his friends for the actually boring activity in a way that they are willing to support him voluntarily. Regarding the law of human action discovered by Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain states: “To awaken a person's desire, all that is needed is to make the object difficult to reach” (Twain, 1876). In 2006 Ariely, Loewenstein and Prelec examined the rules of irrational action described by Twain. They conclude that individuals make decisions based on their intrinsic motivation and sometimes not on “what is reasonable” (Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2006). This enthusiasm of a project leader is transformed in this article and is reflected as a component “project brand strength” in the performance assessment of a project leader (Zwerenz, 2019). The author's experience as a project leader in the implementation of several major projects also takes up this enthusiasm and expands it to include the identification of the project teams with themselves and the aspect of meaningful activities as an incentive in project management. That identification and motivation are on the one hand necessary to enjoy one's profession seems understandable, on the other hand the boundaries between vocation and exhaustion are quickly crossed. Schmalenbach describes this in the article “Sacrifice of passion” in “DIE ZEIT”, issue 2-2019 with the provocative sentence “If you break down, you are a better person”. Committed project managers develop a very similar passion for “their” project and thus a comparable identification with their profession. The tension between income, recognition and prosperity is discussed. Furthermore, the dependencies of meaningfulness, recognition and income are derived from the literature and presented as factors influencing personal well-being. Finally, this article contributes to the design of a motivating variable remuneration system for project managers and other exposed occupational groups.