Project Management: Team Motivation, the Eye of the Storm

"Motivation is the catalysing ingredient for every successful innovation." Clayton Christensen. One of the pillars of project management is motivation. The success of any organisation rests on the ability of a leader to identify the motivation factors of a team and to encourage everyone to maintain positive thoughts and behaviour to achieve challenging targets successfully. This paper explains the practices implemented in the project that increased the motivation level of the team during the difficult and uncertain times of the oil downturn. This method consisted of three main phases. First, to conduct an initial survey to understand the motivation level of the team and identify the areas of improvement. Based on the results of the first phase, a master plan was created it to tackle the areas of improvement and lead the team to achieve the organisations annual objectives. To create the plan, it was necessary to identify the unique strengths and passions of every member of the team, address the need for recognition and strengthen the sense of belonging. After executing the master plan, a final survey was conducted to measure the success of the implementation. The results were outstanding in several areas. With the results of the final survey, it confirmed that the team's motivation level improved by 12%, and in some areas, such as recognition and belonging in 34%. Besides the statistics, the improvement in the motivation level resulted in a more creative team that was able to develop more than thirty operational initiatives that brought significant savings to the customer. All the challenging key performance objectives were achieved contributing to the company's business success. In conclusion, it was proven that even during the uncertain and challenging times of the oil industry, if we can keep our team motivated by reducing the weaknesses and building on top of the team's strengths, recognizing people's contribution to the company and showing them that their work clearly contributes to the business, and will always be possible to achieve even the most challenging targets. The approach is innovative in the sense that goes away from traditional financial incentive plans based on monetary rewards and looks at a deeper and more meaningful aspect of the human been regarding motivation. The methodology is based on Maslow's pyramid and Ikigai concept applied during the most challenging times in the oil industry; resulted in a boost in team motivation and overachievement of challenging key performance objectives.