After a breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios and apple juice, the group set out from the tiny castle with Muffin the Landlord leading the way.

The tiny turbaned man led them into a forest, following a brick path that weaved back and forth around the trees. The path almost overlapped with itself several times where it almost entirely circled a large tree.

Communicating expectations and work completed in a shared employee log is a phenomenal example of grass roots management (bottom up). Your team identified a problem with a communication root cause and acted on it by coming up with a shared communication system to reduce misunderstandings. Your team got buy in. No one said, “Here’s a new system you must do because I said so.”

This issue has been bothering me for a while, it’s about instilling motivation. I’m against both the stick and the carrot when it comes to this issue, (see Barry Schwartz “on our loss of wisdom”) and believe that intrinsic motivation is superior to both by far. I have seen too many teams fail because they were fixated on rewards, or obsessed with not being “made an example of”, instead of prioritizing the mission. But how in the world do you incept intrinsic motivation in employees, co-workers, or even superiors?

– A Serious Dan

I was recently given a book called The Four Tendencies. The premise of the book is that people are inherently motivated differently. Based on their internal and external motivational tendencies, finding out how to influence them will differ. It’s an interesting paradigm on human motivation. I’m not entirely sure I’m bought into it, but it’s worth a read.

What are some useful and detrimental constraints, self imposed or otherwise? I’m leaving this one wide open as a bit of a joke.

– A Serious Dan

I hope you’ve realized, dear brother, that you’re asking 4 questions–which is against the rules, I think.

Danny woke up slowly. He didn’t remember falling asleep.

The bed was soft but short–his feet hung off the end. He did remember knocking on a drawbridge to a tiny castle.