Delivering success through intrinsic motivation— Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
The secrets of intrinsic motivation to drive yourself and others
Significant research has gone into the age old question of what motivates people to achieve great things and deliver consistently to a high standard. Following the initial success of the industrial revolution in unleashing a massive growth in economic output of nations, the next kick up came with Fredrick Taylor articulating the benefits of the assembly line. Taylor was fastidious in his study of efficiency and documented standards followed by Henry Ford and others which saw people confined to increasing specialised jobs, with higher efficiency's than ever before seen in the craftsman economy of the previous century. Part of Taylor’s finding was that when you paid people with bonus’s related to output, there was a positive impact on output, the logical extension leading companies to pay higher and higher bonus’s in an effort to achieve higher and higher bonuses.
These bonus’s are a form of what is called extrinsic motivation — motivation that comes from outside the individual and the can be positive, for example cash payments or public praise, or they could be punitive, examples such as fines or demerit points. The motivator for people is the reward, or avoidance of it.
Our society is dominated by many example of extrinsic motivators, and it is common in our workplaces to have bonus schemes, and Golden Rules and prescriptive procedures all with the assumption that people will do a better job with them in place. As we have moved to a more knowledge based worker economy as repetitive manufacturing jobs are more and more automated, the extrinsic motivation school begins to show weaknesses.
It has since been demonstrated through empirical studies that for repetitive jobs with no requirement for thought or innovation extrinsic motivators will drive increased output (Dan Ariely’s book “Predictably Irrational”)— . As soon as the job requires a degree of skill and thinking however, extrinsic motivation actually starts to drive regressive behavior and inhibit performance. How is this?
Amabile is one of the authoritative researchers into this area providing a model of what drives knowledge workers (1988). This research found that intrinsic motivators actually became far more important for creative workers. Combined with having access to the right resources and being skilled in the required techniques you have a recipe for creative success.
Through a collaboration with Pratt (2016) the expand this further to explain the environmental model you would expect creativity and innovation to flourish in organisations.
Dan Pink has made much of this work popular in his highly engaging book DRIVE in which he highlights the importance of creating an environment where people have Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose in order to consistently deliver high performance.
Autonomy, or the desire to be self-directed; Mastery, or the itch to keep improving at something that’s important to us; and Purpose, the sense that what we do produces something transcendent or serves something meaningful beyond than ourselves (Brain Pickings)
Pink writes that:
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives… 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.
The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery the desire to get better and better at something that matters
Solving complex problems requires an inquiring mind and the willingness to experiment one’s way to a fresh solution. Where Motivation 2.0 sought compliance, Motivation 3.0 seeks engagement. Only engagement can produce mastery. And the pursuit of mastery, an important but often dormant part of our third drive, has become essential in making one’s way in today’s economy. (Edited extract from Drive)
When a person operates in the sweet spot of this trifecta they get in a state of flow. This concept was developed by CSIKSZENTMIHALY
Flow is an optimal psychological state that people experience when engaged in an activity that is both appropriately challenging to one’s skill level, often resulting in immersion and concentrated focus on a task. This can result in deep learning and high levels of personal and work satisfaction. (Learning Theories)
“The flow experience is when a person is completely involved in what he or she is doing, when the concentration is very high, when the person knows moment by moment what the next steps should be... So there’s concentration, clear goals, feedback, there is the feeling that what you can do is more or less in balance with what needs to be done, that is, challenges and skills are pretty much in balance.” (Csikszentmihaly)
John Spence highlights ways to move people especially students to a flow state.
- It needs to be a task that you find intrinsically rewarding.
- You need clear goals and a sense of progress.
- The task needs clear and immediate feedback.
- The challenge must match the perceived skills.
- Flow requires intense focus on the present moment.
The success of many of the Agile Frameworks that drive the innovation economy rely on their inherent ability to create environments that deliver Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
- Mastery: each agile team typically wants to undertake their work to a high standard — delivering maximum value and avoiding crippling technical debt — they also want to be supported by the types of processes and tools that help them be agile (and ensure tight delivery & feedback loops), not hinder them.
- Autonomy: we also know that successful agile teams are self-directing and possess the necessary skills to deliver their work — with as few dependencies as possible.
- Purpose: perhaps we can consider this from the alternate perspective — i.e. what happens when teams do not well understand the value they provide to customers and/or the reason for their existence. Teams without a purpose often spend their time on value-less work, thereby failing to deliver maximum value.
References
- Amabile, Teresa M, 1988, A model of creativity and innovation in organisations http://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Amabile_A_M odel_of_CreativityOrg.Beh_v10_pp123-167.pdf
- Amabile and Pratt, 2016, The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning, https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51996
- Brain Picking — https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-pink-drive-rsa-motivation/
- CSIKSZENTMIHALY, Mihaly — Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
- Fischer et al ,2019 , The Influence of Intrinsic Motivation and Synergistic Extrinsic Motivators on Creativity and Innovation https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00137/full
- Learning Theories — Flow — https://www.learning-theories.com/flow-csikszentmihalyi.html
- Pink, Dan — Drive: The Surprising Truth About what Motivates us
- Spence, John — Five Ways to Boost Student Engagement with Flow Theory — http://www.spencerauthor.com/flow-theory/
More like this…
- Luck and reversion to the mean — Are you fully acknowledging the role luck is playing in the outcomes? Does a good outcome reflect your good skill, or did you just get lucky?
- Systems for knowledge worker excellence — Todd Henry and Cal Newport regularly post on developing systems to use as knowledge workers to help you develop a creative rhythm and consistently deliver better work.
- Are you optimising to deliver value or look busy? — Today’s “always on” workplace makes it increasingly easy to do busy work. But is this allowing you to deliver important work?
- Kanban your work — The Kanban method is in the Agile suite of tools that can help you visualise and prioritise work.
- Organisational Silos and an alternate way to manage… — Can alternate organisational structure create more business value by busting through unproductive silo’s?
