Cycles. In work, you have to have races, projects, sprints, releases, whatever. You can’t just have people slogging day in day out towards nothing. Success for the cycle has to be defined and success must be achievable without comprising your team’s life outside of work. (This is just like any good physical training program – you break up your training into work outs with a goal for each workout – I don’t do this with training because I am a lazy fat butt).

If your team is good, they will set the success criteria higher than is really doable in the time frame of the cycle. They will work harder than 40 hours a week because they set the goal aggressively and they want to achieve their goal.

Always saying that the team sucks and should do more faster results in a team that sucks and should do more faster. Setting the goals and time lines for the team results in a team that can’t set its goals and never meets its time lines.

Don’t do work for your team and don’t micromanage. If you do this over and over, you are in a death spiral. When they don’t deliver, talk plainly about the missed matter and the consequences of it and ask them why it will be better next time. If you win but no one is there with you at the finish line, you aren’t going to win again.