I recently read Drive by Daniel
Pink and in the book, the author goes through what motivates us as individuals
to do stuff and argues that the traditional carrot and stick approach i.e. you
work for pay, is outdated and there is a better way. There are inherently three
types of motivation that the author goes through
Motivation
1.0; the primal drive that pushed to
seek resources such as food and water for survival and better mates for
continuation of our legacy
Motivation
2.0; this is a more refined approach
where it follows a carrot-stick approach and you get motivated to do a task if
there is a reward at the end. This applies in most areas of our lives
especially work where we put in the hours in order to get a salary/ wage at the
end.
Motivation
3.0; this is the upgraded and better
approach to motivation. This comes from within the person and not from external
factors such as money. The task itself is the reward as doing it brings a lot
of satisfaction and enjoyment. This leads to better creativity and works far
better in the long run as compared to motivation 2.0
For Motivation 3.0 to be successful,
there are 3 elements that a person must consider;
Autonomy
The person has to have full control
to execute the task at hand. This involves when and how to do the task.
Companies like Google have a one day where employees can do any project
that they want which has led to great products like Gmail and Google News being
developed. These projects started as side projects and grew to impact millions.
All this happened because the people who created them, were driven from the
start. Autonomy is a must especially in an economy that requires nonroutine,
creative solutions to the problems that arise.
British economist Francis
Green, to cite just one example, points to the lack of individual
discretion at work as the main explanation for declining productivity and job
satisfaction in the UK. There are basically four essentials to autonomy.
The
Four Essentials
Atlassian co-founder, Cannon
Brookes came up with the idea of having the engineers have a day where
they can work on their own projects. This birthed many inventions as people
were motivated to solve various problems in their own way
And what a few future facing
businesses are discovering is that one of these essential features is
autonomy—in particular, autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do,
when they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with
Autonomy occurs when people have
control over four Ts i.e task, time, team and technique
Task
“As an
entrepreneur, I’m blessed with 100% autonomy over task, time, technique and
team. Here’s the thing: If I maintain that autonomy, I fail. I fail to ship. I
fail to excel. I fail to focus. I inevitably end up either with no product or a
product the market rejects. The art of the art is picking your limits. That’s
the autonomy I most cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.” - Seth Godin
Companies such as 3M allow
their employees to work on their projects for 20% of the time when they
are at work. This has led to many great innovations such as Post-It that have
made the company progress in leaps and bounds.
More companies are embracing Motivation
3.0 and giving their employees more autonomy. Companies such as Google
have taken it further and have one day a week where employees can do their own
projects. This has led to inventions such as Gmail, Google News, Google Talk,
Google Sky
Time
“Nothing is
more important to my success than controlling my schedule. I’m most creative
from five to nine A.M. If I had a boss or co-workers, they would ruin my best
hours one way or another.”
Having control over your schedule is
very important for Motivation 3.0 to work. Knowing and controlling your work
hours is way important that a fixed schedule. The problem with 9 to 5 is very
rigid and doesn't accomodate for changes or people's chronotypes.
Your chronotype is a classification
of when your genetic propensity is to sleep. Some people sleep early and wake
up early aka Lions, some sleep a bit later and wake up later aka Larks
and some are quite nocturnal aka Wolves and sleep very late.
Now for a person who has a Wolf Chronotype,
a 9 to 5 would be very disadvantageous to them as they start becoming
productive from the evening towards to the wee hours of the nights. So they are
essentially the most productive when the 9 to 5 has ended.
A 9 to 5 is more suitable for people
with Lion or Lark chronotypes
Without sovereignty over our time,
it’s nearly impossible to have autonomy over our lives
Technique
Having control over technique is
also important as unsupervised work always yields better results. If employees
are not stressing every minute on whether they are following a certain routine
like teleprompters and left to their own devices, interesting things start to
happen
Case in point, a company called Zappos
has its call center agents deal with customers in their own way. There are no
scripts, routines or unnecessary supervision. This has led to a very low
turnover in this sector which usually turnover of even 100% meaning
employees working this year will not be there come the next year.
Companies like Jetblue even
has their customer service agents work from home and all their calls are routed
there instead of one big call center. This makes the agents feel very
comfortable and relaxed and the company customer service rankings are far ahead
of their competitors
Team
For example,
at the organic grocery chain Whole Foods, the people who are nominally in
charge of each department don’t do the hiring. That task falls to a
department’s employees. After a job candidate has worked a thirty-day trial
period on a team, the prospective teammates vote on whether to hire that person
full-time. At W. L. Gore & Associates, the makers of the GORE-TEX fabric
and another example of Motivation 3.0 in action, anybody who wants to rise in
the ranks and lead a team must assemble people willing to work with her -Daniel Pink
It has been shown that people
working in self organized teams perform way better that teams formed outside
their control.
By having to choose your members of
your team, you look forward to working together and solving the problem at
hand. That one of the main reason people want to venture out to
entrepreneurship as it enables people to form their own team who can bring out
the full potential of the business venture.
Thanks for reading all the way to end. This is the end of part 1, go to part 2 of the review to continue.
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