Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and the psychologist Steven Kramer studied some 12,000 daily diaries kept by 238 white-collar employees at seven companies. They found that, of everything that drives people at work, “the single most important factor is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work.” Small wins were “nearly as effective as major breakthroughs.”
When 669 managers ranked five motivators, support for making progress came “dead last.”