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Posted at 10:45 PM in Books, Marketing, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Dan Pink, in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, argues that performance-based incentives – or “extrinsic motivators” – work well for mechanical tasks, but for more creative and cognitive work, incentives overly narrow your focus and inhibit the lateral thinking that powers breakthrough ideas. Counter to that, he provides scientific evidence that more right-brain, conceptual activities flourish best in the presence of intrinsic motivation: the desire to do things because we like them, because they’re interesting, because they matter, and because they’re part of something important. Pink’s operating system revolves around three elements.
Autonomy – The urge to direct our own lives
Mastery – The desire to get better at something that matters
Purpose – The yearning to do what we do because it’s part of something larger than ourselves
In Pink’s TED Talk, he focuses on Autonomy. Traditional management, he says, works great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-direction works better. He provides a few examples of ways in which some companies have fostered self-directed, autonomous activity.
Atlassian, an Australian software company, came up with FedEx Days, in which a few times a year employees get to work on anything they want for 24 hours and work on anything you want. They’re called FedEx days because you have to deliver something the next day, and presentations are given at a company party.
Google is famous for 20% time, allowing engineers to spend 20% of their time working on anything they want. About half of Google’s new products each year result from this 20% time.
He also discusses the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) in which people don’t have schedules – they just have to get their work done.
Every work situation is different. For example, I worked at a global advertising agency in New York where the ROWE system worked very well for creative teams – the only thing that mattered was that they came up with brilliant ideas; nobody really cared how they did it, although as an account manager it was my job to help them get there. And while I had to be present and well-prepared for meetings and responsive to clients, the fact was I could easily disappear and watch a movie around the corner if I wanted to and nobody knew the difference. I worked late, but then I took some long lunches doing Tai Ch’i a few blocks away.
I think highly of Google’s 20% time because, unlike Atlassian’s FedEx Days or other special occasions, it becomes part of your regular schedule – you just carve out 20% of your time to work on your independent project.
Last Christmas, I read a
fascinating book about applying principles of Buddhism to business called The
Diamond Cutter, by Michael
Roach, a Buddhist monk who commuted from his New Jersey
monastery every day
to work at a diamond company in Manhattan. Roach has an even more radical system he calls
Circle Days. A Circle Day requires persuading your employer to let you take one
day off per week to do absolutely nothing work related (he negotiated to every
Wednesday off, with his salary reduced commensurately). The benefit, he says,
is greater mental clarity and a fresh perspective that allows breakthrough
ideas to flourish on the days you are
at work.
The term comes from the Tibetan tsam, which means “border” or “dividing line” and is used to describe the art of getting away from work, going someplace else, and drawing a circle around yourself where you can sit quietly and think. Roach’s Circle Days also require a sympathetic family, because you’re not doing household chores or anything else your family would normally expect from you on your days off. The suggested routine goes something like this:
That is one tall order to fill, and not everyone (myself included) is going to be able to swing it. But I recommend reading The Diamond Cutter for a refreshing perspective on how you conduct your own daily business, as well as its fascinating and strikingly deep insights into both Buddhism and the diamond trade.
Posted at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Last Friday afternoon I watched a really cool video illustration of Dan Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Dan Pink is a former speechwriter for Al Gore and aide to Labor Secretary Robert Reich who has become a best-selling writer on, as he puts it, “the changing world of work.”
The idea behind Drive is that workers are more motivated by Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose than by performance-based financial incentives. What's interesting is not so much the general idea, but rather the counter-intuitive evidence Pink uses to suggest that in some cases, incentives actually have the opposite effect you would imagine.
I found this video as I was psychologically girding myself for a phone conference, via this tweet from @LEVELStudios: RT @bigspaceship: WOW: The surprising truth about what motivates us http://post.ly/jCz0.
Which led me to the blog of Michael Lebowitz, of Brooklyn digital agency Big Spaceship. You can see the video there, or at Dan Pink’s blog, although the easiest thing for you to do is to just watch it here, and then by all means visit the other blogs I mention.
For students of effective tweeting, I think it was the WOW that hooked me. I guess I’m a sucker for WOW. And then, of course, “surprising” is a compelling word choice. “The surprising truth about what motivates us” seemed a worthwhile thing to look into.
So I clicked on the link, and about 30 seconds into the video I thought, “WOW. This is really cool.” I’m a big fan of well-done info-graphics – and this video is an excellent example of info-graphics in motion.
This whiteboard animation is set against a portion of a talk given by Pink at the RSA (Royal Society for the Arts), who commissioned British visual communication agency Cognitive Media to capture it in cartoon images. Cognitive Media has done a number of these for the RSA.
Now, here’s the funny thing. I first watched Dan Pink present his ideas on a YouTube clip of his TED Talk that Garr Reynolds posted on Presentation Zen, and then sort of forgot about it. So I went back to Garr’s blog to check out the original live presentation (which you can see below) and I actually found it more persuasive than the animated video. That may have been because it was now the third time I’d absorbed the message (and typically a person needs to see a message three times before it really sinks in), or because the live presentation is more complete, or simply because a live presentation delivered well is more effective. It’s worth watching both videos a few times, and visiting the post on Presentation Zen will provide some additional perspective.
I think what it comes down to is that great info-graphics can play a powerful role in sparking interest and giving us a panoramic view of complex ideas, but that inevitably we need to go to the source.
Posted at 10:10 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Marketing, Science, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
What are some of the common practices behind successful branded Facebook pages? Frederic Baffou, a former Philip Morris exec who blogs on marketing at Customer Centric, is writing a three-part series this month on social media marketing.
In the first article,
Baffou reports on results of following eight brands’ Facebook pages over a
three-month period. While it’s not
exactly a scientific sample, I personally think we can learn a lot from
disciplined observation of smaller data sets. Here are some of his interesting
findings:
What do we get from this? Once again, we’re seeing the importance of maintaining consistency: specifically, maintaining a consistent schedule and focusing on core ideas.
Posted at 10:13 PM in Marketing, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Yesterday the Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat noted in The Benefits of Doodling that people who doodled while listening to a monotonous recording recalled 29% more information. The source story, Does Doodling Make You Smarter?, was posted on Eric Barker’s blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
Of course those who know me best know that I’ve been an inveterate doodler since childhood. My father was also a doodler, and it was one of his legal-pad-sized mega-doodles that inspired me to work at my craft. Unfortunately it’s an incredibly unproductive craft, more like a bad habit. Doodles are art that gets thrown away.
So I’m always encouraged when I
learn about famous doodlers like Malcolm X. and Alex Haley, or
when I hear news
that doodlers have improved cognitive function (because I swear that although I
may be doodling in client meetings, I’m absorbing every word!). This is one of
my recent doodles.
Recently an agency colleague/friend suggested I host a site where doodlers can share their work. I think it’s a great idea, so I’m thinking of starting up a new blog which would be organized like a photo gallery, where people could submit their doodles to me and I would post them. If I had the money, I might make it more of a community image-sharing site where visitors can create their own galleries and post directly. It would also be great to have a more sophisticated photo-viewer that allows viewers to magnify details.
I’m interested in thoughts or ideas people may have on this, so please post your comments!
Posted at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)