How to get anyone to do anything!

This is how! Go ahead, read this post and you will find the keys to tapping into your or anyone's motivation. I will tell you how you can find motivation to do anything, or to motivate anyone to do anything! I will describe briefly the 6 steps that will make you find motivation to get things done, I will tell what is the force behind motivation and I will share some of my own experiences on success and “progress ongoing”.

Instant influence

I have written previously a post about what drives people to act. The Drive (written by Daniel Pink) has given many answers in how to motivate people in the modern society. For me, that lacked tangible examples, practical process and, odd enough, ways to motivate myself to be motivated.

I follow Daniel Pink on twitter and he posted a blogpost about something called Instant Influence. He just glanced the topic by asking two very powerful questions: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how willing are you to change?” and “Why didn’t you choose a lower number?” Immediately I started asking those questions on why I might want to do something. I began to defend the will to WANT to do something instead of finding excuses why I don’t want to do it.

The writer, Michael V. Pantalon has captured the essence of motivation in the book Instant Influence. It describes the process of asking questions from the “influencee” (he calls the participants of the motivation discussion “influencer” and “influencee”) and allowing her to find her own reasons to embark the road to change.

After I read the book I was in a motivational high and now I will share some of the secrets to you. I will urge you to grab a copy of the book and to read it yourself as this is but an excerpt from the book. The book has special ways to motivate yourself, change resistant people and coworkers, even strangers. There are ways to spot different kinds of indication of budding motivation on people that do not seem to be motivated. It’s quite quick to read and has plenty of practical examples on which to draw useful practices in real life.

The Instant Influence process is based on 3 cornerstones:

1. No one absolutely has to do anything; the choice is always yours
2. Everyone already has enough motivation
3. Focusing on any tiny bit of motivation works better than asking about resistance

Scare tactics don’t work! If you get bullied into doing something, you’re just as likely to choose not to do it. By saying things like “have to”, “should”, “must”, etc. just strengthen the barriers of resistance. Asking about “why might you choose to do it” is more important than telling the effects of not doing something.

6 steps to success

The book describes a process for finding the motivation. The process comprises of 6 steps. All individual steps are analyzed in the book and the power behind them is revealed for you to make the most use of the process. Every step has examples of different flavours on how to get the best out of the step with different people and situations. The process goes roughly like this:

1. Why might you change?
2. How willing are you to change?
3. Why aren’t you less willing to change?
4. Imagine you’ve changed. What positive might become of it?
5. Why are those reasons important to you?
6. What would be the next step, if any?

The first question is to allow the influencee to state the problem and to tell why she might want to commence the process of changing behavior. Asking “how might I change” may bring results but the reason behind the change could prove to be more important than thinking the actions. Trying to figure out how should one change can be overwhelming if not clear with the reasons behind the change.

When asking people “how willing they are to change” the question should be detailed to fit the situation. If I wanted to motivate myself to clean the apartment, I might ask myself: “How willing, on a scale on 1 to 10, might I be in clearing the living room table?” By breaking the task into smaller pieces and motivating oneself to do at least one of the smaller tasks, one can create a snowball effect and end up being motivated to clean the whole apartment and the garage! The number, which should be had in this question, is trivial but it creates a base for the next step.

Let’s say, I answered a “5” in the previous question. I might then ask, “Why didn’t I choose a 4 or a 3?” Then I will immediately start defending the reasons I MIGHT WANT to do the task at hand. This also gives you the opportunity to state the reasons, obvious or hidden, behind your budding motivation. Sometimes, questions 2 and 3 can give enough ground for the influencee to get motivated, but I always ask the influencee if she might be willing to answer more questions.

At the 4th step the influencee is allowed to imagine the world after the change. You can create a scenario where all the obstacles are cleared and the ultimate end result is reached, thus removing any negative influences that might arise at this stage. Focusing on the positive images might motivate the person to begin the journey to the destination, but remember to break the task into smaller goals to make the transition to being motivated easier. And I assure you, the smaller you make your goals on self motivation, the easier it is to start actually doing something.

When the influencee can identify the positive outcomes, she should be asked why those are important. Autonomy is the key here: “Why are these reasons important to *you*?” Drilling into the most deep and profound reasons might be intimidating, but after realizing that the deeper, most personal reasons are the ones that drive you to do things, you can get things done more easily and quicker.

The 6th step is important so that the influencee is clear on what she wants to do next in order to get gears turning. Again it is important to enforce the influencee’s autonomy and power to choose her actions. By asking “What might you do next?” instead of telling, can be the crucial element of finding the true motivation to do something. The action plan can be as simple as “I want to go to the living room and look at the coffee table.” or as detailed as necessary, verbal or written. But I encourage you to have an action plan. To make it even more powerful, state the reason why might you want to do it. “I want to clean the coffee table to make room for my coffee mug. I live my morning coffee when I watch the news and I don’t enjoy holding the cup on the sofa pillow.”

One thing to remember is to choose *active* actions in your action plan, that is to follow the “Dead man’s rule”: Never choose an action a dead man could do! “Don’t eat too much!” could be “Eat just enough to make you full but not too full.” “Don’t smoke!” could be “Smoke 2 cigarettes less a day for one single week.” Be active about the change, however small a change you’re aiming at.

Live exercise 

This is an example of me using the instant influence on myself. I will be bith the influencee and the influencer. I will ask the questions and I will answer what is the first thing that comes to my mind – no later editing, but I will add some notes in brackets afterwards. I have a task that I want to do: I want to write a column to a testing magazine here in Finland. The due date is approaching (or went past already) and my brains are refusing to provide input to the task.

Influencee me: "I want to write a column, but it seems too hard."
Influencer me: "Why it seems too hard?" (I don’t fully understand what makes the writing so hard.)
Influencee me: "I can’t find anything meaningful to say. The ideas I have feel crappy and incoherent. I wish I could find a thread which I could then follow through the column." (I’m frustrated by the situation.)
Influencer me: "Seems like you struggle with a problem that feels too big. What is the smallest thing that you can do to get started writing the column?" (I try to scale things a bit and try to find some spark of motivation.)
Influencee me: "The smallest thing would be to… well… open Word and start typing." (I try to dodge the responsibility.)

Influencer me: "Seems reasonable enough. Why might you want to do it?" (I try to enforce autonomy. I also fell into sarcasm there, which is not good as I could have been more objective about the situation as a whole.)
Influencee me: "Like you asked, I want to get the column written."

Influencer me: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where ‘1’ meaning “not ready at all” and ‘10’ meaning “as ready as possible”, how ready would you be to open Word and start typing?" (I could have tried to push on the “why” with the reasons I want to get the column written, but I thought that I can always ask more about the deep reasons later.)
Influencee me: "To be honest, I’d say about a 7. I like seven, because it’s quite high but not nearly the highest as it could be. Ok. To be totally honest, I’d say 5." (When I really started to think about how motivated I am, I realized that my motivation is alarmingly low. The impact of really thinking about the number was quite important to me. It may not be to others, but knowing about the process, it felt really important to me. The number is arbitrary and is there just to form a base for the next question, but can create surprising effects.)

Influencer me: "Why didn’t you choose a smaller number?"
Influencee me: "Well… I do want to write the column, as I have promised to do so. I also want to share the thoughts I have on the subject as I think many other people are struggling with that kind of issues. It is also a good way to get my name out there to be seen as a writer. On a 4, I would be saying that I don’t want some of those things, but I do." (I started to defend my reasons. By this point I was ready to increase my number to 7, but didn’t. I already had some thread for the column formulating in my head.)

Influencer me: "Let’s say you have written the column. What would be the positive outcome of that?" (I created a happy, sunshine scenario where there is no evil and all columns are done within deadline.)
Influencee me: "I would get the appreciation of my peers. They have worked hard on their papers, and by completing mine I have shown the same dedication towards creating a good testing magazine." (I reflect my actions against others’ but it feels like a shallow reason.)

Influencer me: "Why is the appreciation important to you?"
Influencee me: "I feel that the status of testing professional needs constant visibility to the public and to the community. The appreciation feels like a materialization of the reputation in the community." (Here it started to get personal. I was thinking about stopping writing, because I had no idea where this talk would lead me.)
Influencer me: "Why is the reputation and more so the good reputation in the community important?" (Drilling into the most important reason.)
Influencee me: "Well… to be honest. I might feel that because I have no doctoral degree or the like to boast around, I must constantly prove myself to be worthy of the status I have achieved in the community. Or I think I have achieved it." (I’m constantly saying “to be honest”. I’m trying as hard as I can to be. As much as I want to succeed in the exercise and make it as authentic as possible, I want to get the column done in time.)
Influencer me: "Why do you feel that the status is important to you?"
Influencee me: "It makes me feel like I’m worthy."
Influencer me: "So, you might want to write the column because it might make you feel appreciated and worthy. Is that correct?" (Here I reflect what has been said and formulate them into a single sentence motivation statement. I also try to enforce the autonomy by checking that it is correct.)
Influencee me: "I guess so, yes - to feel worthy of the perceived good reputation."

Influencer me: "So what could be the next step that you’re willing to take, if any?" (I leave room for choosing not to perform any actions.)
Influencee me: "I guess I will reserve a 90 minutes brainstorming session using a mindmap to clear out my thoughts and to create a plan for the column. I will do it while in train to work as I have plenty of time then, but I will make a calendar appointment so I can remember it. That will help me to find the thread and inspiration for the column. I might even finish the text while I’m at it. If I can’t find a thread while doing so, I will write about not finding thread." (I made a plan that has a specific action, a reason to do it, and a situation to amplify the action. I also mention a next step, which I didn’t even thought I was planning. In addition to all that, I made a plan B if my initial effort fails to give results.)

Now we just have to see if I was able to finish the column in time. :)

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PS. If you feel like trying this in real life, contact me through Skype and we can try to motivate you to do something that seems too hard for you to do.

Flashback to Learning

I rarely have the concentration span to write complex and analyzing posts. If I believe that the subject has more to it than I can scribble in 90 minutes, it will more likely become a candidate for an article and will be more fine tuned than a regular blog post. Now I thought I would write an update to my blog describing the second day at the Rapid Testing Course, but then I thought writing another a diary-like entry was not exciting enough - and I want my scribbling to be at least a bit exciting.

So why do I have to make a blog post about something that I’m not willing to investigate? I don't! That's the beauty of it! But I want to make a quick post on something interesting. In order to do a blog post from something that requires little to no research it could be about an experience that is worth sharing. This post is not from today’s class but from past but the topic was brought up today in the class.

James Bach and Michael Bolton use the Socratic Method to help learn stuff in their courses. To simplify, they ask a bunch of questions from a tester to squeeze out an answer - not possibly the right answer but one good enough. I got my share of the method in the class but I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about an event that happened 4 months ago. (Enter fairy bells tinkle and a wobbly picture to demonstrate a flashback...)

I wrote a white paper about six months ago about heuristic testing implementation that was discussed in a Peer testing session late last year. The article was about to be published in a testing magazine and it was fine tuned for couple of months by the editor and a couple of voluntary proofreaders. I still wanted to have a comment from James Bach and Michael Bolton as I have a respect for their opinion in all testing related issues. And so I sent a reviewed draft to them and waited for approval.

What then happened, I couldn't expect. I had high hopes on the content of my article as it had been reviewed multiple times by bunch of different people. I thought I was in a verge of a breakthrough and praises would that flying my way. Instead, James’ reply was simple:

“I'm completely opposed to this.”

What followed was an exchange of emails between me and James about the problems with the article. It concluded in a suggestion to remove the essential elements that I based the article on. I thought James had got it all wrong and I requested him to discuss the difference in views that we seemingly were having. Skype was the medium of choice.

We ended up talking for 90 minutes. First we were talking about the article itself and he clarified some points he had made earlier. Then James challenged some of the essential elements of the article and I tried to defend them as best I could. All the while doing so I thought better descriptions for the principles I was using. I was on hot coals during the conversation: if I had chosen a bad wording for my answer, he would grab it and ask the real meaning behind the words I was using.

The article did not survive, but I did. Later I was a happy to have endured the barrage and decided to hone the article so that I could later publish with pride and joy. I never really understood how much the discussion had given me, though. I had learned some very valuable lessons. The critique on the article was secondary compared to the practice I got performing under pressure and all the while holding to my beliefs. As James said in the course today, there is none worse than tester who is “pathetically complying”. I could have said “OK. I won’t publish! Just don’t yell at me.” and I would have lost all my credibility. I learned how to defend something even though I might be wrong. Ilari Henrik Aegerter gave me a coaching session once where we practiced exactly that: how to be able to defend your point. And so I became better at explaining myself and defending my point under pressure.

What I would have done differently is that I never really tried to sympathize to James’ point of view as I so aggressively tried to get mine across. I could have got more out of the conversation if I had listened more carefully and sought for meanings and advice that he gave between the lines.

Having shared this experience also enforced the learning that I experienced, for I was able to verbalize some of the stuff that I had thought only briefly. Next steps for me are to revisit the article bearing the real purpose of the article in mind, and try to make it better (if not perfect). The article is resting and collecting dust currently, but I will tackle the beast soon enough. I believe that the Rapid Software Testing course will give the inspiration boost that I need to get it done (although I think extrinsic motivation plays no part in this, as I already WANT to finish the article). Too bad I didn't sign in for the Let's Test! conference with the paper. ;)

Be the best known if not the best!

This blog post is a summary and might not justify the zeal, the enthusiasm, and the humor the original keynote had. Again, this is my view about the track. There might be something that I have misunderstood, so challenge me. The first day's last keynote at Nordic Testing Days was done by Torbjörn “Tobbe” Ryber, a Swede with great sense of humor* and huge talent in speaking about testing**. I was never heard of this guy before although I had a book written by him in my bag!

Torbjörn "Tobbe" Ryber

I had expectations*** that we were going to receive a rant about getting oneself certified and perfecting the art of writing test cases, or something of that general direction. Little did I know that this was going to be one of those life changing experiences. Before the keynote I had some views about my own testing career and the direction I was trying to go, but the insights Tobbe would give. The track was called "How to become a really great tester"

The presentation started with simple introduction to what kind of career Tobbe had earlier, and ended into this magnificently inspiring talk about building a software testing career. From year 1995 he had been reading testing books and doing testing to some extent. If I remember correctly he was appalled by the bad quality of something their company was developing and he was thrown to test it. He had different experiences and events that affected the career choices he had made, but he tried to get as much information about testing as possible. Around year 2000 Tobbe decided that he was going to be the best known tester if not the best. Also there were no suitable classes for him, so he started to teach testing.

So, this guy decides that he wants to be a tester, and to be a good one. Can we just decide that we want to be something and then get it? Obviously we can. This reflects to my own career as a tester. If Tobbe started his career in 1995, mine began at 2007 by getting thrown into the deep end of software testing. I was assigned to do test planning, design and execution to a mail/parcel logistics software project. Having no experience of testing theory or practices, I began to search every single Finnish testing blog, book, and/or expert from which I could illicit information. I said to my boss that “I want to be the best tester in this company”, which was fairly easy as I was the only one.**** Nonetheless I had similar start on my career as Tobbe had; we made a decision and we started acting on it.

Back to the business! Tobbe describes his career in three acts: the second one beginning around 2000 and trying to float in the IT-crisis. He fought the situation by getting certified, by joining the Swedish Association of Software Testing, and by contributing to the community by teaching testing and applying his accumulated knowledge to his work. This all seems like an easy job, but I can assure you that while trying to do the best job at the office and simultaneously trying to gather as much knowledge and skills as possible is not a walk in the park. He started to build his fame by writing about testing, joining peer workshops and all kinds of activities. Eventually he published a book about Software test design and thus building even harder foundations to his career.

So if you want to be well-known in the community, you might consider the following:

• Have something to say*****
• Go and talk to other testers within your community
• Hold  workshops, trainings, tracks, experience reports******
• Write about what you do and what you would like to do

I started my career first by reading blogs and articles. Then I went where other testers were and started conferring with them. I got my first testing connection by sending an email to Maaret Pyhäjärvi and asking does can I have some of her training slide sets. Then I started going to events and trainings to get more connections and eventually started holding workshops on my own. I also started writing a blog about testing, first I wanted to challenge the community to be more loud about itself and then about what I did and what I wanted to do. So basically I started to spread my network, and gathering experiences and connection.

Tobbe had achieved his status in the community by doing all kinds of activities that supported his career, skills, job opportunities and familiarity to others. He chose to do things that he liked and not to do things he didn't like (thereby making testing more FUN). He wanted to enjoy testing. During the keynote he never said “certify yourself, “do this” or “read this book”, he stressed the freedom of choice for people to develop their own career to the way they choose. One thing he stressed, though. Everyone should have a plan how to develop oneself. The route chosen is one’s own business, but without a plan the route is hard to be travelled. The plan may get changed during the travel – even the destination might change – but that’s a part of growing and developing. Nobody knows everything, but one could consider planning it ahead.

When	What	How	Why
2012	Have a public presentation	Search for conferences near Helsinki and propose a track or a workshop.	To gain confidence in performing and to gain familiarity
2012	Publish an article	Search for a suitable publisher and offer an original article about something testing related	To gain familiarity and to establish a base of references for myself or others
2013	Take the BBST exam	Talk to people who have done it and find out how, when, where it can be done, and WHY	...

I made my 5-year plan a year ago. I have almost achieved the goal in the first year, but I still have a long way to go. And I have also made a 10-year plan to complement the first. I have had a lot of sidetracks on my plan, but the overall direction has been the same all the way. I think Tobbe had had his share of sidetracks and obstacles during his career, but he is the best known Swede testing expert to me.

Just like Tobbe asked after his keynote, I will ask you: “What is YOUR Plan?” How are you going to become a great tester?

The first step is the easiest: Want it.

PS. My plan looks like this:

*) A Finn saying a Swede has a sense of humor means that he has an enormous sense of humor to the rest of you.
**) I haven’t seen him test so I cannot say he has a talent in testing. ;) I assume that he has some talent, but again this Finn-Swede-competition-thing might mean that he also has a huge talent in actually doing the testing.
***) Yes, I’m still a Finn. ;)
****) Later I rephrased it to be "I want to be the best in the company in testing" and later "I want to be the best known tester in the Finland".
*****) If you don’t have something to say you could start by challenging someone who has something to say. A good place is to challenge those whose blogs, papers, book you read. Even though the challenge might be Devil’s advocate –kind of challenge, it usually generates conversation and thus give you something to say (and you might learn something new).
******) You could start at your own office to get familiar with speaking out loud and to face challenging. You can then join peer conferences and share what you have already done to your colleagues. Eventually you can proceed to talk in conferences and events, if you feel like it.

Integer != Natural number (night before NTD2012)

This is a blog post about my feeling on the night before the Nordic Testing Days 2012 conference.

I just came from the restaurant of Meriton Grand Conference & SPA Hotel. I was there chatting with Ainars Galvans, a Latvian tester that I met the first time today but has great ideas about testing, bugs and test management. We ended up talking about bugs and reporting them in a valuable way (by the way he’s going to do a track about bugs tomorrow here in the conference). He had a good example about interpretation of a specification. It went like this (sorry Ainars if I misinterpreted it somehow):

The testers were testing a random generator that had 2 input fields – “from” and “to” – and some basic GUI elements; buttons, checkboxes, whatnot. The application gave an output of random number between the numbers in the input fields. Simple enough. The number was supposed to be either integer or floating point (chosen with the checkbox). The application threw an error on negative numbers.

Isn’t integer allowed to be negative? I hope to hear more stories from him about bugs and specifications. That leads me to the agenda of today:

What is going to happen tomorrow and on Tuesday?

On Monday there’s the “How do we test at Skype” –keynote which I’m really looking forward to. With tens of millionsof users the quality of a product is very important. Sometimes even business critical. The other keynote for that day is the  "How to become a really great tester" which is also sounds pretty interesting. That is after all why I am here – to become a better tester.

I decided to choose 1 session that I really look forward, 1 that I never thought I would find interesting and 1 workshop. Obviously this strategy allows me to attend more than just those, but I believe that I will get my mind expanded by the tracks and workshops. I feel awful to miss Kari Kakkonen's track, but if there'll be a webcast, I'll check that out later. Also the Behaviour driven development and test automation with Cucumber -workshop would have been great, but I have to choose.

So here’s my list for Monday:
- Testing, saved by the end-users, by Maili Markvardt
- Care for quality, not for bugs! Do you know the difference?, by Ainars Galvans
- The anatomy of testing- ASA emergency room practices, by Kristjan Karmo
- Exploratory Testing – find you inner adventurer, by Sami Söderblom
- Non-functional testing on mobile devices –workshop, by Nikolai Pavlov

Caffeine + entusiast tester = Blogging at 1:00am

After the first day I will have my head full of juicy information about quality, testing and bugs! And guess what! There’s the other day also! How great is that?!?

So, now I got to get some sleep as I hiked through the city to find the hotel. I was exploratory… hmmm… exploring of the beautiful city of Tallinn. Note to self: No coffee after 10pm. But <enter adult beverage> is still allowed...

Motivation 3.0

After reading the Talent-book by Jeoff Colvin I had a hole in my mind that needed filling. Why does a person embark on a grueling adventure of deliberate practice? What drives you to excel? Poof! (Somehow the poofing got into my writing, but I can’t fathom why…) In came the Drive, a book by Daniel H. Pink about motivation. Mr. Colvin was quite vague about motivation (or the focus was more on what and how instead of why) so I made a decision to skip the motivation part and go deeper in a future post.

Now that I have read (and somewhat understood) the Drive I feel like I can make a contribution and share some of the secrets about “what motivates us”. The deliberate practice (of which mr. Pink also talks in his book) is fuelled by motivation: If we really want to do something, we can do it. “But why?” Hold on, I’ll share some of what I have learned. (This is not a book review but interpretation about motivation using the book as guide.)

A little history about motivation: When we were cavemen, Neanderthals or Finnish ski-jumpers, we had a drive (the book calls it Motivation 1.0). That was the need to feed, drink and f…. reproduce – the drive to survive. “Hey look! we survived!” And that motivation served us to get by, to fight cougars and wolverines, to eat nutritious food. But as humans developed the Motivation 1.0 did not serve us properly; we needed something more to motivate us. We needed upgrade to the Motivation 1.0 to motivate us to do our job. The second basic drive that motivates us is the extrinsic motivators: rewards and punishment, carrot and stick, etc. The book calls it Motivation 2.0; the upgraded way to operate and motivate us. It served us well with basic-straightforward –repetitive tasks like assembly line or the like. The system awarded us from good behavior and punished us from bad behavior. The managers of that time thought they could use incentives like bonuses to motivate people to do their bidding. And people did… when their jobs were “basic-straightforward –repetitive”. Nowadays the menial tasks have been automated and people are moving towards problem solving, innovative, creative jobs that are hard if not impossible to automate. The Motivation 2.0 doesn’t support that kind of work. In fact it may result in unwanted behavior and to diminish the wanted behavior. And how many managers and companies have seen this?

The DRIVE introduces a third drive that is called Motivation 3.0. It is the intrinsic motivation that we all have. A person that responds to intrinsic motivation may not respond well to extrinsic motivation. The book uses example from children’s play.

If a group of children are asked to paint or draw, they all draw. Kids love painting! But then half of the children are told that they can get a reward from drawing. What happens is that they all draw for a moment but the rewarded children are less likely to continue drawing after they get the reward as the children that were not awarded continue drawing like they used to. The award turns play into work. And that de-motivates us.

There are however some ways to get “carrot and stick” working to increase out motivation. The “if-then” reward may cause a moment’s burst in motivation and efficiency but they are prone to do down very quickly. “If-then” reward may lead into addiction (as in “I won’t do the same task for the same money anymore” or “I want TWO candies to take out the trash”) or suppress the wanted behavior. When used as a “now that” award it can sometimes encourage a person to create an intrinsic motivation to reach the possible award. For example an Olympic runner has a set of goals (to beat personal best, country top ten, etc.) instead of just one; the Olympic gold medal. They may try to reach that goal but they aren’t looking the medals as “If-then” but “now that” reward. The same drive, well, drives us forward in our work and personal life. We tend to seek goals that are fuelled by intrinsic motivation and steer away from extrinsic motivation (or at least most of us do). In most of us there is both kind of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, but what makes us most tick is the inner drive to accomplish something, not what others want or tell us to be.

Daniel H. Pink has studied the field of human motivation and cites numerous studies from psychology and economics in his book. He has narrowed down the intrinsic motivation into three main elements that make the intrinsic motivation work: Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those are not elements that Motivation2.0 willingly supports or acknowledges.

Autonomy

We people have the need for autonomy, need to be free. Nobody WANTS to be… ermmm….. not-free. The managerial style that supports extrinsic motivation focuses on compliance (“Do as you are told”). Instead the intrinsic motivation focuses on engagement. With autonomy people are able to engage into their job and be more satisfied in it. The old style world says “People need to be managed” but in truth (on a number of studies show) that people need autonomy to shine. Autonomy over Tasks, Time, Technique and Team (4T) invokes the inner motivation and boosts our performance, get us into FLOW! Companies like Google, Atlassian, etc. are great examples of autonomy.

Even though autonomy motivates us it needs to be well thought of. For example autonomy should be a perk that encourages people to CHOOSE some of the things they do, CHOOSE the time they do it (at least on some level), CHOOSE the way they do it (in the frame of what is accepted or tolerated) and CHOOSE who they work with.

Atlassian shows a good example of autonomy over tasks. They hold a “FedEx day” every quarter. The “FedEx day” comes from “delivery overnight” and it basically means that people can choose ANY task they like (a problem waiting to be solved, an innovative idea) and they have one day to make it work. In the noon of the next day they all have to present their product, solution, whatever to other co-workers. This sprouted some of the most innovative things they’ve done. The problem was that they only had 24 hours in a quarter to do it. So they changed it into 20% of all working time. This “20% time” is now where innovation happens.

Where Atlassian excels at Task autonomy, companies like Best Buy, Meddius, F-secure, etc. excel at autonomy over time. “When people don’t just show up and grind through their day they’ll be more productive.” Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, says: “Nothing is more important to my success than controlling my own schedule.” Autonomy over time gives you the freedom to do things when you are on your most productive state, in the FLOW. Monitoring is again needed but trust also motivates people; trust that they will show up and do their work.

Autonomy over technique is the corner stone of craftsmen. Take art for example where new techniques are found every day. There would not be Monet’s pointillism technique if he had not the autonomy over technique he uses. If people are forced to obey the rules by which method they work, they tend to be unhappy. If exploratory testing would be forbidden in where I work it rules out so much testing done and so many techniques I use, I couldn’t do my work efficiently. The choice over HOW I do the things I do is for me the most important aspect (as you can see from “Best Practices (NOT!)”).

Autonomy over team is probably the most difficult one to achieve. Some companies have done their share in team-wise autonomy by letting the workers into the recruiting process. For example, F-secure Corp. has an additional step on in the recruitment process which includes a team interview. All candidates get a chance to meet the team and mingle a bit. Then the team says their opinion about the guy and a decision is made. Other companies (like Whole Foods) have removed their executives from the hiring process and let the team members do the hiring. Then after 30 days trial time they can decide to “keep ‘em” or “lose ‘em”.

Other form of autonomy over teams is the free time activity with the co-workers. The autonomy over team presents itself with off-time clubs and sports teams that the workers put together. After being made the social connection to people it is easier to communicate even with harder issues in the work place. After you have a choice of the people you work (or play) with the work has more meaning and is more fluent.

Even though autonomy is a hard biscuit to swallow, companies eventually move towards autonomy. Though some managers still think people are from the same mold as they came in the 1910’s we all strive towards freedom. If we weren’t there would be no companies like Google or Zappo’s. And by giving people more choice over the four T’s (Tasks, Time, Technique and Team) they just might perform better and be more creative than their counterparts that are forced to comply instead of engaging.

Mastery

Motivation 3.0 allows us to be more engaged in what we do. Instead of complying other people strict rules we seek to accomplish goals that are closer to us and thus being more close to the subject we work with. Engagement has also this weird way of encouraging towards mastery. By getting closer to the subject we find a need to better ourselves in doing the thing we do. E.g. by being allowed to program without the boss breathing to your neck, one just might find an innovative solution to a problem. Mastering our jobs motivates us to do our jobs better.

I already had a few words about getting better at what you do (in my post "Why top performers are top performers") but mastering is a motivating thing as well. There might be no need to motivate you separately to master a field as the prospect of mastery provides the motivation needed.

When people reach a flow in what they do (check out books about the Flow) they usually are more prone to searching mastery. They notice that they can achieve something they do with ease and start increasing the performance and the difficulty little by little. This is what the book calls “Goldilocking”; not doing things that are too easy (they get you bored) or things that are too hard (they get you anxious), but doing things that are “just right”. Jeoff Colvin describes this in three circles inside the other. The outer layer resulted in boredom and the center resulted in anxiety. By staying between boredom and anxiety is the optimal place for achieving mastery (and learning). But it seems that mastery is a fickle thing…

Mastery is a mindset! If you don’t think you can achieve mastery then you probably won’t get it. In the book there was a good example about intelligence and development thereof. If you think about your intelligence as fixed amount of knowledge then your intelligence might not increase from what it is currently. If you think your intelligence as a muscle that you can train it most probably grows. As I described in the performance post, there is nothing preventing you mastering the domain you want except yourself.

Mastery is PAIN! Every single athlete knows that without pain there is no result. Only by repeating the exercises, training programs, etc. can mastery be achieved. There are no shortcuts to mastering a domain only hard work. And to top it all mastery is an asymptote. One can never truly and fully master something as there is always more to learn. That is one of the most appealing things that drive us towards mastery: it is almost impossible to achieve. The fact that full mastery cannot be achieved is both frustrating and alluring and it seems that it is the process of mastering an art that drives us towards it.

Purpose

The third element of intrinsic motivation seems to be a sense of purpose. We rarely do things (and enjoy them) if we don’t know answer to the question “why”. In companies that have large engines of bureaucracy and command chains the purpose of doing something is easily lost. Doing something that “makes no sense” is a serious de-motivator to us using the Motivation 3.0. Companies seek purpose to make their product/service more appealing. Companies support developing countries and thus make a purpose for business; it’s more fun to work if you know that your work has a meaning.

In business world the purpose is something of a nicety; you can live without realizing the full purpose of what you are doing. In the TV-show Friends this guy Chandler is a data analyst who has no idea why he does he does. By realizing the fact that there was no purpose for him to do the job he lost his motivation. If you feel you don’t know why you do something, start asking “Whose purpose is it anyway and what have I got to do with it?” We need to do our work/live our lives to accomplish something and Purpose is “the something”. There are three basic pillars to support the purpose motivator: Goals, Words and Policies.

Goals work as a milestones to purpose. By setting different goals you feel you are accomplishing something even though you have some path to tread until you achieve some bigger goal. By setting both performance goals (getting an A in a math test, reaching your sales quota) and learning goals (being able to understand and apply the math, being able to fully understand the need of a customer) their overall impact on your motivation is optimal. Performance goals support the extrinsic motivation and learning goals build intrinsic motivation. The goals we set pave the way to the purpose and as we strive to reach the goals we move towards our purpose.

Words are fickle. Words can change our way of behavior. Think about vows. If you vow something (like a “I speak the whole truth, etc.”) it sets you a standard, a purpose, to strive to. When things are said out loud they are stamped into our brain as a code of conduct. When a group of Harvard graduates in 2009 saw that the economy is going downhill because of economists and business people cheated or cut corners rather than practice ethical economics, they saw that they could make a chance. They made “the MBA oath” (just like a Hippocratic Oath) to “strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.”

Words are also used to measure our behavior. Listen to your co-workers talk about your company. How many times they use the word “they” to refer to the company instead of “we”? The “we” signifies that the company is coherent and everyone thinks they are in the same ship sailing towards common goal.

Policies are also an aspect of purpose. They overlap a bit with both Goals and Words as they are a part of both. Policies refer to ethics and good manners. Wrong policies can push towards unethical behavior or even discrimination. Let’s say we have a HR policy that goes something like this: “All members of the company should treat each other with respect and kindness.” The atmosphere in the office might just be open and friendly and all conflicts are resolved with a friendly talk. Let’s say if they change the policy into: “Abusing, harassing, bullying, physically or mentally assaulting a co-worker is strictly not allowed with a penalty of a fine. Racist or sexual comments, behavior, writings…” Now that most likely sets the environment not possibly to encourage bad behavior but at least make it more controlled and closed. Policies allow people to pursue the Purpose with their own terms.

Motivation 3.0

The science has known the third, intrinsic drive for many decades and it is researched by many. The business world just hasn’t grasped the Motivation 3.0 yet. The “carrots and sticks” are for cavemen; the new trio is what motivates us today: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

See more about the Drive from http://www.danpink.com/drive.