How can I motivate members of a university project without money or punishments?

Question

First of all: if this is not the right place for this question, please move it to the appropriated one. This one was the closest I found to the subject.

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Context

Some context: Junior enterprises are completely voluntary work. I'm a member of a junior enterprise of a Computer Science course at our federal university. We are going through some bad time in terms of external products, negotiations and growing in general.

Problem

Thing is: the members of the enterprise are kind of settled down, accommodated to the situation, without motivation to learn, to develop systems of their own, to bring value to themselves and the corporation.

We know that the fact that not having progress at negotiations is a big turn down to any enterprise, and it seems that is too hard to create an internal project that would motivate by deadlines, like an external project would do with a real paying client.

Forcing the members to deliver value by punishment rarely is a solution, and in our case specifically, doesn't seem to be a good idea since, from the beginning, we are voluntaries. We are starting to apply a - kind off - simple benefits policy, but personally I think it will not, by far, be enough...

I know it's a situation with a lot of variables envolved, lot of details and background history, and should take a longer text to give it all. I've tried to make as simple as possible.

Question

After all, what we really want to ask, and receive some advices maybe, is:

How do we treat an internal crisis of a junior enterprise, composed of voluntaries, not experienced members, that won't bring value for the enterprise of for themselves.

Answer 1

Play with their reputation.

Create a dashboard/scoreboard and place the photos and names of each team member. Put some metrics there like tasks assigned, completed on time, late tasks and a effectiveness ratio. Define this in your charter as a performance management system.

Print this dashboard in a A2 paper and stick to the wall. You can update de metrics using post-it notes. Use your creativity!

Also, you can establish a ranking/badge system, like the guys on MacDonalds. When they achieve a specific goal, they get publicly recognised and get a increase in their rank.

People will be more careful on how they are seen by others and start to perform better. This doesn't cost anything! Just a little bit of management time. You can even define that people that score poorly on a given week/month need to bring muffins (at their own expense) to the office (that's positive punishment).

Good people will like the exposure, the bad people will need to make a call, on looking bad on the scoreboard or simply leave.

Human being is competitive by nature, use the competition as motivation. Money or punishment doesn't motivate people, competition does.

Try it and post the results back to the forum. I'm curious to see how it will go ;)

Cheers

Leo

Answer 2

Motivation Requires Perceived Value

What you're really asking is "How do I motivate people without meaningful rewards or punishments?" If you don't have people who are intrinsically motivated by the work or the success of the project, and you have no real leverage with them, then you can't succeed in creating motivation where it doesn't already exist.

People work for rewards (intrinsic or extrinsic), or to avoid what they perceive as negative consequences. Either form a team with people who are intrinsically motivated by the work at hand, or by the perceived reward/punishment of the work's effect on their grades, or admit that you have the wrong team and terminate the project early through whatever channels are available to you as part of this assignment.

From a project management standpoint, those are your options. Anything else is likely to be based on something other than the pragmatic practice of project management methodologies.