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.
I think the comments thus far have been a little harsher than is necessary. Sure, some of them are a bit cliched but that's fine. None of them seem as tacky as the traditional corporate motivational posters. Perhaps if I worked anywhere near the valley I might be more critical but given that I work in a city that is as far removed from start up culture as possible, I'm probably not as jaded (for lack of a better word) as most HN users.
I purchased one of these posters because the quote addresses one of my biggest repeated failings and the author, Jason Fried, is someone I have a lot of respect for. I wouldn't mind an attractive reminder to avoid my perfectionist, obsessive nature hanging over my desk.
Kudos on the site design and the idea. Best of luck to you. My only quibble is that the site name could be a bit more subdued on some of those posters.
Agreed. These are more like a koan or kata. They help focus the mind in moments of distraction. Maybe like a haiku - simple words to stimulate a beautiful response in the mind.
To be perfectly honest I'd be pretty offended if a place where I was working put these on the walls.. The Holstee Manifesto (http://shop.holstee.com/?campaignid=446&mbsy=7pD) I understand, because it's great. But these are just trite and tacky, form over function kind of stuff.
I reckon I'd be far more inspired by, you know, pictures of the team. Or lolcats.
I think your company should form its own culture, not try to synthesise one by propping up posters of vacuous bullshit that basically tries to tell you how to do your job.
I think I agree.. but your own culture can be useful in this form. I dig the "Go fast and break things" posters hanging around the facebook office (dunno if they're still there). It makes sense to me that if your team finds some core values it might be good to commit them to paper and toss them up and a way to remind everyone, especially new folks that it's a hard-won tenant the team believes in.
But I think the idea of importing those values in the form of posters picked off of a website somewhere makes it easy to skip the important part of doing the hard work to figure out what your team collectively believes in.
CEO seated at fusty mahogany desk says "Eagles, jet fighters, and crew shells aren't selling to these 'millenials.' Hire some hipster models and get some 'edgy' copy!"
Yeah, that's why motivational posters are usually a dumb idea. The words are almost always true, but very context dependent. Stuck on a wall like that they lose context and start to seem absurd, things start to feel like a Dilbert cartoon.
I suppose it's possible that these posters can motivate a team, but only if everyone on the team knows and understands, on a deep level, what the slogans stand for. Unfortunately, it's very tempting to skip the part where you have a set of long, hard, emotionally draining conversations with the team, where the team puts measurements in place that help them see when they're not holding to their stated goals, where they get frustrated but keep trying to improve things anyway. Why go through all of that when you can just put up a poster!
(edit: My point is that these posters seem like they should be earned, not just purchased.)
I think what's getting people upset is that they are called 'motivating' posters. I would hang these up in my office for two reason:
1) They look nice and nothing wrong with having a nice looking off space.
2) They serve as reminders. Sure we all 'know' these sayings and try to apply them in everything that we do, but that doesn't mean we forget sometimes and stray off the beaten path. Just like saying we could all have someone tell us "do unto others..." every once in a while.
I just had a torn out page from a magazine with Audi RS4 on it framed and hung on the wall at the eye level. As dumb as it was, it did miracles during the crunch times.
There are 14 posters here, but the five I can see above the "fold" on my 1440-pixel high monitor are definitely the worst five. The last five posters are awesome because they say something that it's possible to disagree with, and is therefore worth saying. The top five are trite and cheesy.
Except it's wrong. It should be... Experiment. Learn. Repeat.
There's too much emphasis on failure. If you keep focusing on failure, you keep thinking about failure. I prefer to think of learning experiences. Learn. Learn. Learn. Eventually you find a combination that works!
I love the designs, and I think it's a great way to make money. Wish I'd thought of it first :) I can see companies paying a bit more to motivate their employees.
these are kinda pricey for what they are. fab.com has awesome prints likes these on sale every now and then for half the price and now free shipping. just saying.
