When I see those, I always remember the quote from Peopleware - DeMarco / Lister :
"These motivational accessories, as they are called (including slogan coffee mugs, plaques, pins, key chains, and awards), are a triumph of form over substance. They seem to extol the importance of Quality, Leadership, Creativity, Teamwork, Loyalty, and a host of other organizational virtues. But they do so in such simplistic terms as to send an entirely different message: Management here believes that these virtues can be improved with posters rather than by hard work and managerial talent. Everyone quickly understands that the presence of the posters is a sure sign of the absence of hard work and talent."
And echoing one of the items from W. Edwards Deming's list of deadly diseases (from "Out of the Crisis", 1982): "Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force."
Create better systems, don't decorate the walls with nonsense "motivating" junk.
Motivation:
If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.
I know that the word "hack" is over-used these days, so I say this with some trepidation, but when I first ran across the despair.com posters, I wast quite overwhelmed with the brilliance and success of their "hack" of the motivational poster paradigm.
Having spent a number of years in corporate life, often in offices spotted if not plastered with such posters, their parody quite hit home for me.
I think the effect depends on who put these up, management or employees. Personally I like to keep a copy of the Cult of Done manifesto around. I have learnt to hate when my own perfectionism keeps me from shipping in time and that poster seems to help.
Peopleware is a great book to read, highly recommended and I hope DeMarco and Lister write a sequel as I'd love to find out what they think of balance balls and standing exercise desks.
I doubt that many people see these posters as a substitute for hard work and managerial talent. Why not put your core values on the walls? It is a reminder of what the company thinks is important, which is a step above what we often have at my job.
