Drive: Autonomy
In my last post, I told you I was reading Daniel Pink’s latest book, Drive as fast as I could. And I strongly recommended you get it. If you have not, do. It applies to us all, not only for those who lead in formal ways. And since I believe that we all are leaders in some way, shape or form, the information applies to YOU.
Drive says that for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is assuming you strive for optimal performance.
I had not thought too much about it before, autonomy that is. I am fortunate that for most of my working life, I have had a fair amount of it, so I have not spent much energy thinking about it. And somehow it seemed like the right thing to do when leading people, so that is the approach I’ve taken. But these days the whole concept of autonomy is right in front of me. I get to see what it means as my young child wants to do this, that, and so-and-so himself. “I can do it, by myself. No, I want to do it (don’t help me, Mommy).”
And if we start out this way as toddlers, why then is that not the case for many in the world of work? Of course there are standards to meet and for some types of work there is a “proper” way to do things that doesn’t allow for too much autonomy. But for much of the work today, autonomy is the way to go if you want to the person doing it to really be “into” what s/he is doing and the result to be higher, better performance.
Drive says that we have a default setting (like my toddler) and that is to be autonomous. That is, when people have self-direction over what they do (the tasks), when they do it (the time), how they do it (the technique) and who they do it with (the team), they and you get big payoffs.
We all want to outperform yesterday and I’d add, our competition. Autonomy is one way to make it happen.
Tags: autonomy, Daniel Pink, drive, leaders, optimal performance, self-direction
