Business-As-Unusual: A Seismic Shift in Business Culture

Submitted by guest blogger Sue Krautbauer

It’s a beautiful thing when seemingly disparate ideas intersect. In the book  Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, David H. Pink examines traditional theories of motivation which utilize external rewards and brilliantly contrasts them with research in psychology and behavioral science that states an individual is successfully motivated by intrinsic rewards.

The way we have always done things isn’t working.  The baby boomer generation is burned out from chasing after unfulfilling economic rewards and the new crop of millennial talent who are just leaving places of higher learning are primed to ‘make a difference’ in today’s workplace.

For the most part, these creative and internally motivated people are being stuffed into the box called Traditional Business.  Conventional work culture doesn’t motivate creative people.  The carrot and stick “reward” philosophy of incentive pay, repetitive tasks, and hierarchical management does not support an individual wired with an intrinsic reward system.

The information world is changing at hyper speed as well – Blogs, webinars, streaming video and social networks are changing the way business gets done.  And this meteoric change in how we work together facilitates collaboration for creative thinkers, entrepreneurs, and out of the box thinkers, providing a setting where they can thrive in this new world.

Conditions are ripe for examining a new way of thinking about work. Pink’s solution? Create work environments that promote three elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

The first of the three elements, autonomy, is not independence or rouge individualism, but rather the ability of an individual to make a choice, resulting in higher job satisfaction, creative thinking and performance.  Companies like Atlassian, 3M and Google have all successfully designed programs that encourage autonomy and creative thinking in their employees.  These programs have resulted in major breakthroughs for both their employees and their companies.  For instance, Google has a concept called “20 percent time” whereby its staff is mandated to use 20 percent of their time to work on a side project.  They might use the time to fix existing issues or problems, or to work on new ideas.  They can be related to Google, or just to social change and interests that are near and dear to the employee’s heart.  This concept has resulted in innovations like Gmail, Google News and efficiencies developed for the hybrid car.

This success is based upon the notion that if employees are given time to choose autonomous projects that feed their creative juices, it’s a win/win for both the employee and the company. At its simplest, these employees are intrinsically motivated because the work is connected to their interests and passions; is inherently social in nature because it involves interacting, providing feedback, and sharing with others; and typically occurs during tangible, creative activities that are open and discovery-based, involve tinkering and play and are not highly directed.

Rethink “rewards”.  Provide compensation that speaks to the creative, inventive individual in each of us – simple solutions such as fair pay to time devoted to projects that promote an individual passion can result in seismic cultural change. Encourage creative behavior that is intrinsically rewarding, provides deep satisfaction and fulfillment typically follows.

Certainly not business-as-usual, is it?

Ah, you didn’t think I’d tell you the whole story did you?   Keep reading to see what Pink has up his sleeve; ideas that will transform our world to Business-As-Unusual.