"The truth is, everyone is working crazy hours, doing impossible tasks, and still keeping on the cheery side of the street. God help me, I do love them so."

We are all in this crazy economy together, where budget cuts and hiring freezes, and the mantra of "do more with less" are so prevalent. But hearing an employee that is so content with the chaos is not the norm. In fact, it's outright counter-intuitive.

So how is this guy staying on "the cheery side of the street"?

We wanted to know too, so we found a video of the author speaking in Atlanta recently, and shared it here on our site for everyone to watch.

The video is an excerpt from Teresa Amabile's new book called The Progress Principle: Small ways to ignite joy in the workplace, which is the result of an intimate study into the stories of motivation in the workplace.

Her book is unique in that it is not a top-down view of management decisions and business cases, but it is the story of those on the front lines, those who are tasked with creating and delivering value every day despite the craziness that has been ever present as the world marches into the twenty first century.

She is trained as a psychologist and has incredibly deep experience studying thousands of journals documenting employee emotions as they experience the workplace day-to-day. Her presentation was very well received and we thank TheLeaderLab.org for directing us to this video of her insights and findings presented at a TED talk in Atlanta a few weeks ago. It's a great story about what really builds motivation in the workplace and we are excited to share the excerpt below:

Teresa's closing remakes say it best:

"Imagine the transformation we can bring about in our ability to solve the problems of the future if all of us, whether leaders or individual contributors, create a climate of attention where everyone is looking for opportunities to support progress and nourish the people who are making it.

Think. What one thing you can do tomorrow to enable someone to make progress on meaningful work?

Do it. And then celebrate that progress.

Make that a daily discipline, and you can bring about a world where people perform well, and where people feel good about their work."

Join us at the Mission Driven Management Summit in March to continue the discussion about motivation in the workplace, in a world where knowledge and ideas are the keys to achieving success.

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• Motivating People with Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose (December 27, 2010)
• My Balanced Scorecard and the Theory of Constraints (September 9, 2010)