While machines might give the same level of output everyday, the same doesn’t apply to people.

In a real environment, each member’s momentum and motivations will change without notice. This requires management to step in and make sure they are constantly evolving the processes so that members will remain motivated. Leadership is important to motivate key players, channel information to keep everyone engaged and make working horizontally routine. To accomplish this, management might bring in an outside champion, who will help wring in new ideas and “fresh” stream of motivation. Instead of looking at a project as a whole, it should be broken down into smaller goals that are realistic and achievable. Management should encourage and build on small success, to demonstrate that it was an important milestone and motivate members. Progress and results should be demonstrated so that members can all acknowledge the ongoing progress and success.  Management can keep the members interests by ensuring that they are always focused on achieving the goals that were set, and if deviation is detected, corrective action is taken to bring things back on track.

A horizontal team is dynamic as it is always changing, management needs to account for its dynamic nature and make necessary adjustments to accommodate/adapt to the change. Money is probably the best motivator, but too much money too early in the process can hinder individual initiative and prevent people from innovating. Since horizontal structures focus on team collaboration, a downfall is that meetings can go on forever and schedules can be missed; this can unmotivated some members who feel that decisions are not being made in a timely manner, which is why management can implement deadlines which will help practitioners develop a common schedule and manage workloads effectively so that the projects momentum is kept at a steady pace.

[Source: Moving from the Heroic to the everyday: Hopkins, Couture, Moore]