Quick Access to What Motivates Us (Daniel Pink)

Daniel Pink has a few ideas from RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.



The video was embedded in an online article by Mike Saporito on August 20, 2011 titled Hello Map the article's author expands on a great definition of responsibility and how we might look at workers.  He distinguishes two motivations that he says

• If an individual is responsible for only “mechanical” work requiring little thought and creativity…rewards do work (i.e. – carrots and sticks; “if you do this, then you get that”). The higher the pay, the better the performance.
• If an individual is responsible for work requiring even rudimentry cognitive skill…rewards do not work. (i.e. - ”If…then” rewards actually hurt performance.) When a task requires creative thinking, rewards hurt performance.

This is a very good Briefing on Management 2.0 thinking.

What I Learned Today: Monday, October 22, 2012

Monday, October 22, 2012

What I learned Today!

• Human Resources as a business entity has to step up in the new economy.             Deliver:  self-realized, committed, responsible, antonymous, team oriented, and trained in communication in the new economy. 
• Now to figure how I translate that into small business and non-profit reality.
• HBR or Harvard Business Review has reinvented itself and is striving to be the cutting edge publication in management.  I have been moved by the transformation.
• Now to figure when I have time to read this stuff?
• Entrepreneurship in the 21^st Century is Enterprise 2.0 ( maybe 3.0?).  Business schools and their associated universities are moving fast to adopt new innovative views of organization and management.   Leadership gets a makeover.
• Unfortunately we have a lot of hungry people out there looking for access to entrepreneurship with misguided business plans.

How about a (Not) Ready, Set, Go power pattern?

Power Patterns are created memes that "enable" us to overcome resistance.  The (Not) Ready, Set, Go power pattern as applied to business, involves the idea of experimenting.  Instead of getting stuck on "Getting Ready", we proceed to "SET" and "GO" in the real world with real ideas, actions, consequences. Following the power pattern we apply, you don’t know how it will go –  you just go.  In business,  (Not) Ready, Set, Go shows up as skipping the focus groups (including the dumb political ones) and getting out of the building (as Steve Blank says is Lean Launchpad Startups) and experimenting with real customers.

As a power pattern, it reminds me of Marilyn Davidson’s “ready, fire, aim” power pattern.   I got this idea from an ad for the Harvard Business Review blog.  Unfortunately, I never could find an actual article that this might have been derived from.  (HBR October 2012 Pg 10) That’s what makes it a gift!

(Not) Ready, Set, Go Power Pattern

A few weeks ago, I created a team of friends and family to help me getting the 15 years of family accumulation of "stuff" out of my house.  I called it a House Clearing Pitch Party.  When I looked back at the House clearing “pitch party” that was so successful in freeing me up, I remember there was my being “not ready” for what showed up.  I was uncomfortable with the preparation I had made.  I consciously declared accepting “not ready” as if it were OK, just allowing it to be.   The day showed up and the result was a miracle.  The place got cleared of loads of stuff.  My personal energy that is restored from “managing” all that stuff is awesome.  The universe is organizing me.  I followed the pattern:  I wasn’t ready, I set, I go.   It went, and like I said, it was a miracle being paid in value to me many, many times over already.  Like a spiritual awakening, all that energy and freedom. 

Try it on next time you think you are sidelined by “not being ready enough”.  Like this little article, I could keep tweaking it for a day, week, perhaps a month and never send it.  Or I could just hit send.