Look For What You Want

Our good friend and colleague, Laura Goodrich, has just published a book to accompany her video Seeing Red Cars.  We are pleased for her success, and really appreciate her message.  It’s so much in alignment with Madd-Steiny’s philosophy of moving toward what you study.  When we work with organizations, we help them look for what is positive and life-giving about their culture and community, instead of only looking at something that needs to be “fixed”.

Goodrich’s message is simple:  Focus on what you want.  We are conditioned throughout our lives and in our culture to identify what we don’t want.  Many of us have a natural inclination to be motivated by our fear of loss or failure.  In the book, Goodrich cites research that “it is estimated that we have 12,000 – 50,000 thoughts coursing through our brains each day, 70% of them are focused on what we don’t want and what we’d like to avoid.”  Perhaps it’s that Neanderthal in all of us that is motivated to avoid being eaten by something bigger than we are.  There is something undeniably important about outrunning predators.  But, I believe that one of the most threatening predator to our success is our own thought process.  The downside to thinking about what we don’t want, is that we often take our eye off the “ball”─the “ball” being our goals and desires.

So, what can you do, right now, to help focus on what you want and create the results you desire?  Start as I do on most days (not all days . . . I’m an imperfect animal with Neanderthal tendencies):

Create a list of what you want from the day.  This is not a ”to-do list”.  Rather, it’s a list of what you want your day to bring and the experiences you want to have.

This list, helps set an intention for your day and shifts your focus to what you want.  And, these intentions don’t mean you are aspiring to greatness every moment; small steps matter.  Here are some examples:

Today, I want to . . .

-       Create something new.

-       Step outside of my comfort zone.

-       Feel a sense of accomplishment.

-       Have fun.

-       Learn something.

When you set these intentions, your focus then becomes about “how to “ vs. “how not to”.  Try it tomorrow when you awake and see if you don’t find more and get more, of what you want.

Lynae

What Drives Performance?

I’m reading Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive.  The premise of his book is that the traditional “carrot and stick” approach to motivation doesn’t work over the long term.  He presents some compelling evidence to make the point and argues that it’s time for organizations to upgrade their motivation systems.  Specifically, he says that motivation systems need to move away from a focus on the extrinsic (rewards) to fueling people’s intrinsic desires – the inherent satisfaction with a particular activity.  I am intrigued by this idea because it speaks to the notion of employee engagement which is a topic that we at Madd-Steiny Productions are wild about.

When an employee is engaged, their “whole person” is involved in something – body, mind, heart and spirit.  Pink’s argument suggests that the traditional motivation systems speak only to extrinsic values which often only connect to actions and outcomes.  In other words, extrinsic motivation generally only appeals to what a person does with his body and mind.  For example: “Produce 100 widgets, and you get 100 dollars.”  Or, “Come up with 10 good ideas and you’ll get a day off.”  Now, for some folks, this is enough.  In other words, their main motivator is external rewards and any deeper satisfaction is secondary.  But for others, the main motivator is something that speaks to values of freedom, challenge, purpose and meaning.  This is what Pink suggests is missing from the traditional motivation systems.

In the book, Pink states: “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”  To intrinsically motivate people, you have to create space for three elements of motivation to take root: autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Let’s start with autonomy.  Pink is convinced that people are naturally curious and self-directed.  So, when given autonomy people produce greater results.  (There’s loads of science to prove this, and Pink includes a lot of it in the book.)  Then, there’s mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters to us.  Unlike autonomy that happens in the moment, mastery takes place over time.  So, it’s an organizational responsibility to provide the tools for people to create satisfaction by becoming really good at something.  Finally, there is purpose.  Purpose provides context and people who are primarily intrinsically motivated want to know that there is a purpose greater than themselves of which they can be a part.

There is a lot in the book and this is only the tip of the iceberg.  But, I am really excited about what I’m discovering and wanted to share some of my learning.  And, some of my early thoughts about motivation systems are as follows:

• One size does not fit all. There are different types of people with different motivations – both extrinsic and intrinsic.
• Motivation systems don’t actually have to be “systems”. Rather, they can simply by inherent elements of organizational culture that create space for people to be autonomous, develop mastery of skills, and hitch themselves to a purpose that gives meaning to their daily activities.
• It is possible to do something new and achieve even greater results. We have to let go of old ideas that are producing average results and be willing to explore alternatives to help us achieve extraordinary results.

There’s much more on this topic that I will write about in future blog posts.  Let us know if you have thoughts about motivation that you’d like to share.  And, I encourage you to pick up Dan’s book.

Lynae