Special thanks to Daniel Pink for inspiring me to doodle this in my moleskin this morning. I’m half way through his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and the “4 T’s” he discusses in the context of autonomy has got my brain buzzing. I thought the sketch I did was worth translating to powerpoint for a discssion this morning.

This makes me wonder if the desire to get to that red dot sweet spot is the very essence of what drives people to become entrepreneurs.  What do you think?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Autonomy In Your Work

“What many people don’t realize is that when you force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, you have to deplete the energy from your body to do it. When you make it through a week where you have forced yourself to do work you don’t enjoy, you will feel exhausted, drained, and in need of martinis, industrial-strength aspirin, and/or face-planted-in-pillow rest.”

“When you do things you love, your body generates energy naturally. You may work an equal number of hours, or more, than when doing work you don’t enjoy, but the difference is you will feel spent, not depleted.”

You can’t really say it better than that, can you?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Depleted vs. Spent

There’s been a strong surge in the pro-entrepreneurship movement this year urging individuals and organizations to focus on making a difference. People are starting to see how participating in the culture of entrepreneurship and doing things and working on problems that add value not only gives them a sense of fulfillment in their lives, it improves society overall. The great shaking out we’re all experiencing right now is producing new thoughts and solutions on how to go about doing what we do and finding meaning in our lives. Some call it “The New Entrepreneurship“, or “awesomeness” and some simply call it “working on stuff that matters“.

What would you do tomorrow if you were laid off today? Would you change the world?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

What Would You Do Tomorrow If You Were Laid Off Today?

The following presentation “The Future Of Work” was shared by Jeff Brenman. It’s designed to be read and offers a quick, visual overview of trends we can expect that are changing how we’ll work and compete for jobs in the coming years. Here are some of the trends -

• Individuals will have more power and freedom than ever before
• Informal education is more available and accessible via the web. Degrees will matter less.
• There’s no longer an excuse to “not know how”. Self-teaching and resourcefulness will be make-or-break skills.
• The future of work is flat – You’ll work with project teams around the world.
• Employers will have on-demand access to a larger and more skilled workforce. Competition for jobs and work will no longer be tied to where you live.
• Transparency in work history and performance feedback will become the new resume.
• Better tools will continue to revolutionize productivity management/measurement.
• Your earning potential will be based on merit, not location.
• To stay employed in the workplace of the future, you’ll have to work hard to stand out.
• No one is going to guarantee you a lifetime career. Accept it and adapt.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Trends That Are Influencing The Future Of Work

The Three Elements Of The New Operating System

In this TED talk, Dan argues that there’s a mismatch between what scientists know about motivation and how businesses today reward their workers, and that if we look closely at the data gathered from studies on what truly motivates people it’s clear that we need a new paradigm. Here are some of the best nuggets…He says:

“…too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science…if we really want high performance on those definitional (cognitive) tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach

….the scientists who’ve been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It’s an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they’re interesting, because they are part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

(1.) Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives.
(2.) Mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters.
(3.) Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.”

After presenting the findings of studies performed by leading scientists and economists at the London School of Economics, Dan sites some examples of how this new work paradigm is being put into practice in leading firms:

Worker Autonomy, 20 Percent Time and Innovation

“20 Percent Time…Done, famously, at Google. Where engineers can spend 20 percent of their time working on anything they want. They have autonomy over their time, their task, their team, their technique. Okay? Radical amounts of autonomy, And at Google, as many of you know, about half of the new products in a typical year are birthed during that 20 Percent Time. Things like Gmail, Orkut, Google News.”

Results Only Work Environments (ROWE)

“…an even more radical example…something called the Results Only Work Environment. The ROWE. Created by two American consultants, in place at about a dozen companies around North America. In a ROWE people don’t have schedules. They show up when they want. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time, or any time. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, where they do it, is totally up to them. Meetings in these kinds of environments are optional.”

What happens? Almost across the board, productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up, turnover goes down.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Dan Pink on The Science of Motivation And The Building Blocks of An Entirely New Operating System