Credit: Jerry Bauer
Can you cite any companies that are fully embracing these ideas?
I don’t know if there’s any single company that’s doing so across the board, but there are examples out there of companies that have adopted at least some of these ideas. One of my favorites is an Australian software company called Atlassian. The people that are putting a premium on autonomy by allowing their engineers to set aside an entire day, once a quarter, to work on any problem they want, in any way they want, with anyone they want. There are only two rules: whatever they work on can’t be part of their regular job, and the very next day they’ve got to show the rest of the company what they’ve created. (That’s why they call them “FedEx” days—people have to deliver something overnight.) Over the years, this odd little exercise has produced an array of software fixes and innovations that might otherwise never have emerged. As one engineer there put it, “Some of the coolest stuff we have in our product today has come from FedEx Days.”
It astonishes me that more companies aren’t doing things like this. It’s silly in a way. These guys are doing this radical thing—giving employees autonomy one day a quarter—and the results are breathtaking. You’d think others would want to follow suit. Unfortunately it goes against the old carrot and stick motivation folklore. Actually, to be fair, there is another company—3M—that pioneered this type of thing years ago under the leadership of a progressive CEO named William McKnight. His credo was “Hire good people and leave them alone.” He encouraged his employees to engage in what he called “experimental doodling” and instituted a new policy that allowed the company’s technical staff to spend up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their choosing. The result was a harvest of innovations including Post-It notes, which are now a monumental part of 3M’s business.
Part of Friday series on Motivation. Series one will be quick posts with Daniel Pink, followed by a series of other motivational articles.
What motivates YOU?
Listen to the interview here > Conversation with Daniel Pink. You can download the show to iTunes by clicking the icon on the player.
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[FTC disclosure: Daniel Pinks publisher sent me a copy of the book, Drive and the Q & A materials I am using here as posts]
