Get in the trenches and help them. Identify bottlenecks, provide resources, show people that asking for help will get them what they need, divide up the work in

Get in the trenches and help them. Identify bottlenecks, provide resources, show people that asking for help will get them what they need, divide up the work into smaller chunks and try to identify who would be good at it. Help out wherever you can, whether that's coding yourself, or getting them better computers or CI/CD credits or QA support or pizza once in a while. Build morale and team cohesion through a good work life balance and a meaningful product. Do they share in the success of a good launch, such as with meaningful bonuses or vacation or promotions? If not, can you push up to make that happen? Do they share in ownership of what they're building? Not necessarily in the equity sense, but do they help plan features and implementation and timelines, or are they just thrown tickets to work on? If you just treat them as disposable minions producing commodity code too slowly, well, no wonder they don't care about your forced sense of urgency. If you run your dev shop like a factory assembly line, sure, a few people might rise to the occasion and perform to spec out of a sense of work ethic or sheer desperation, but most will just burn out or quiet quit while looking for a better opportunity. Give them reasons to care about their work, the resources and training to do their jobs effectively, and the respect and autonomy they deserve as individuals... the rest comes together if your timeline is realistic. Most of us don't work in glamorous, world-changing companies, and a lot of the work is mundane. It's easy to see through situations where some timeline is arbitrary and middle management just likes to flex and seem important while upper management randomly pivots anyway. It's hard to give a damn about urgency in situations like that when it's all fake anyway, successes get enjoyed by the top, and failures get pushed to the bottom. If your company is like that, I wouldn't expect much motivation anywhere in the rank and file...