Visible goals
I recently read a neat article on how making goals visible helps encourage people to achieve them. The author uses his own experience with creating a visible goal to illustrate his point. The story talks about how he wanted a computer in the days when laptops were still very expensive. He worked hard all summer and carefully saved all the money that he could, and he ended up acheiving what he originally thought as being very improbable, if not impossible. Turning an abstract goal into something observable has been proven to encourage productivity and success. Perhaps this is something that more companies should try.