Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
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| THE ART OF AUTONOMY Think fora moment about the great artists of the last hundred years and how they worked—people like Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. Unlike for the rest of us, Motivation 2.0 was never their operating system. Nobody told them You must paint this sort of picture. You must begin painting precisely at eight-thirty A.M. You must paint with the people we select to work with you. And you must paint this way. The very idea is ludicrous. But you know what It’s ludicrous for you, too. Whether you’re fixing sinks, ringing up groceries, selling cars, or writing a lesson plan, you and I need autonomy just as deeply as a great painter. However, encouraging autonomy doesn’t mean discouraging accountability. Whatever operating system is in place, people must be accountable for their work. But there are different ways to achieve this end, each built on different assumptions about who we are deep down. Motivation 2.0 assumed that if people had freedom, they would shirk—and that autonomy was away to bypass accountability. Motivation 3.0 begins with a different assumption. It presumes that people want to be accountable—and that making sure they have control over their task, their time, their technique, and their team is a pathway to that destination. Of course, because most workplaces still reverberate with the assumptions of the old operating system, transitioning to autonomy won’t—often can’t— happen in one fell swoop. If we pluck people out of controlling environments, when they’ve known nothing else, and plop them in a ROWE or an environment of undiluted autonomy, they’ll struggle. Organizations must provide, as Richard Ryan puts it, scaffolding to help every employee find his footing to make the transition. What’s more, different individuals will prize different aspects of autonomy. Some might crave autonomy over a task others might prefer autonomy over the team. As Zappos CEO Hsieh told me by email, Studies have shown that perceived control is an important component of one’s happiness. However, what people feel like they want control over really varies, so I don’t think there’s one aspect of autonomy that’s universally the most important. Different individuals have different desires, so the best strategy for an employer would be to figure out what’s important to each individual employee.” Still, however those individual desires express themselves on the surface, they grow from common roots. We’re born to be players, not pawns. We’re meant to be autonomous individuals, not individual automatons. We’re designed to be Type I. But outside forces—including the very idea that we need to be “managed”—have conspired to change our default setting and turn us into Type X. If we update the environments we’re in—not only at work, but also at school and at home—and if leaders recognize both the truth of the human condition and the science that supports it, we can return ourselves and our colleagues to our natural state. “The course of human history has always moved in the direction of greater freedom. And there’s a reason for that—because it’s in our nature to push for it Ryan told me. If we were just plastic like some people think, this wouldn’t be happening. But somebody stands in front of a tank in China. Women, who’ve been denied autonomy, keep advocating for rights. This is the course of history. This is why ultimately human nature, if it ever realizes itself, will do so by becoming more autonomous.” |