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On May 2, 2014, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California certified a class of bus and train drivers, who claim that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MUNI) failed to pay them for working overtime for hours spent on workplace tasks including attending meetings and filling out vehicle inspection paperwork.

Whether you just quit your job because you could not stand your supervisor’s behavior, attitudes, or jokes; or you are pondering taking legal action against your current company, you want to avoid repeating your mistakes and your bad experiences.

Here are some other ideas to help create an environment that will “self-motivate” your workers.

You have had a rough time at work lately. Perhaps your boss deliberately underpaid you. Perhaps a coworker or a client said something viscerally offensive to you. Can you fix what is broken, or should you cut your losses and move on?

If paying employees more fails to stimulate better work, then how do you generate intrinsic motivation among your key people?

Our society is fairly obsessed with the concept that employees can be “motivated” into doing work they do not like or do not want to do. But is this conventional wisdom valid?

Here is an example of how to use the 5 Whys “in the real world” to get to the root cause of a managerial crisis. Imagine that you are trying to fill a slot for an Executive Sales Vice President. You have had a big turnover problem: six people have held the job in the last three calendar years.

Whether you have been hiring inefficient workers or experiencing a dreadfully high turnover rate, you are struggling to make your HR processes work smarter for your company. Over the next several posts, we will be introducing and discussing a very exciting, well-respected methodology for understanding root causes of business problems.

Whether a coworker sent you a disturbing internet clip; your supervisor told a nasty ethnic joke at a meeting, or a client made a pass at you at a company retreat; you are distracted and depressed by what you have been through.

Middle school is long behind you. But you still face bullying at work that feels uncomfortably similar to the bullying you experienced in your youth.