Autonomy Mastery Purpose

This is first in my series of “Work Wednesday” posts where I’ll discuss aspects of the work we do or feature projects I’m working on.

Recently I watched a TED Talk delivered by Daniel Pink about how the science of incentives in business actually work but how businesses don’t adopt these findings and treat white collar workers like they were assembly line workers.

He points out that the type of work most white-collar workers do now is cognitive in nature as opposed to simply tasked-based. For this sort of work, people need to think about things from all sides and angles.

The key appears to be giving people the option to have autonomy, mastery and purpose.

• Autonomy: the urge to direct or own our lives
• Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose: to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Of the non-profit arts organizations I know of and work with, the ones that excite me are the ones that allow their staff to do those very things. Recently, I presented my workshop to seven employees at AMSSA and I have to say “hats off” to their executive director, Lynn Moran for letting them take two hours out of their day to attend the workshop. It’s an example of an organization that does let its employees have a good degree of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Giant companies like Google allow their employees to work on anything they like for one day a week. ANYTHING, so long as it’s not their regular projects. The innovation that comes out of this has resulted in products like Gmail and Google Reader.

Maybe I need to give myself a day a week to work on anything that doesn’t involve current projects. New things, creative things, fun things, challenging things.

I wonder if nonprofit arts organizations would let this happen?

What are you thoughts? Would it work? Do you have autonomy, mastery and purpose in your job?

[ image is from bigstockphoto ]