[acb-hsp] Experiments in Workplace Autunomy

[peter altschul]

Hey, Deb:

You bring up a good point.  Clearly, a given approach won't work 
well with everybody.  But do keep in mind that a well-functioning 
system can have a powerful positive influence on all personality 
types.

Best, Peter

----- Original Message -----
>From: "dchandler001" <dchandler001 at carolina.rr.com
>To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" 
<acb-hsp at acb.org
>Date sent: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:03:19 -0700
>Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] Experiments in Workplace Autunomy

>Hi.  What about people who need more structure or are less 
driven?  Ttype II
>personalities.  for example.  Deb
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "peter altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net
>To: "Acbhsp" <acb-hsp at acb.org
>Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 5:34 AM
>Subject: [acb-hsp] Experiments in Workplace Autunomy


>> Ode bar March 2010 wwwddodemagazineddcom
>>  Daniel H.  Pink bar March 2010 issue
>>  Experiments in workplace autonomy
>>  Photo: Dusanzidarst Dreamstimeddcom
>>  A little past noon on a rainy Friday in Charlottesville, 
Virginia, only a
>> third of CEO Jeff Gunther's employees have shown up for work.  
But
>> Gunther-entrepreneur, manager, capitalist-is neither worried nor 
annoyed.
>>  In fact, he's as calm and focused as a monk.  Maybe that's 
because he
>> didn't roll into the office himself until about an hour ago.  Or 
maybe
>> that's because he knows his crew isn't shirking.  They're 
workingbjust on
>> their own terms.
>>  Gunther has launched an experiment in autonomy at Meddius, one 
of a trio
>> of companies he runs.  He turned the company, which creates 
computer
>> software and hardware to help hospitals integrate their 
information
>> systems, into a ROWE-a results-only work environment.
>>  ROWE's are the brainchild of Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, 
two former
>> human resources executives at the American retailer Best Buy.  
ROWE's
>> principles marry the common sense pragmatism of Ben Franklin to 
the
>> cage-rattling radicalism of American community organizer Saul 
Alinsky.  In
>> a ROWE workplace, people don't have schedules.  They show up 
when they
>> want.  They don't have to be in the office at a certain timebor 
any time,
>> for that matter.  They just have to get their work done.  How 
they do it,
>> when they do it and where they do it is up to them.
>>  This appealed to Gunther, who's in his early thirties.  
"Management isn't
>> about walking around and seeing if people are in their offices," 
he told
>> me.  "It's about creating conditions for people to do their best 
work."
>>  That's why he'd always tried to give employees a long leash.  
But as
>> Meddius expanded, and as Gunther began exploring new office 
space, he
>> started wondering whether talented, grown-up employees doing 
sophisticated
>> work needed a leash of any length.  So at the company's holiday 
dinner in
>> December 2008, he made an announcement: For the first 90 days of 
the new
>> year, the entire 22-person operation would try an experiment.  
It would
>> become a ROWE.
>>  "In the beginning, people didn't take to it," Gunther says.  
The office
>> filled up around 9 a.m.  and emptied out in the early evening, 
just as
>> before.  A few staffers had come out of extremely controlling 
environments
>> and weren't accustomed to this kind of leeway.  (At one 
employee's
>> previous
>> company, staff had to arrive each day before 8 a.m.  If someone 
was late,
>> even by a few minutes, the employee had to write an explanation 
for
>> everyone else to read.) But after a few weeks, most people found 
their
>> groove.  Productivity rose.  Stress declined.  And although two 
employees
>> struggled with the freedom and left, by the end of the test 
period Gunther
>> decided to go with ROWE permanently.
>>  "Some people [outside of the company] thought I was crazy," he 
says.
>> "They
>> wondered, `How can you know what your employees are doing if 
they're not
>> here?`" But in his view, the team was accomplishing more under 
this new
>>>rangement.  One reason: They were focused on the work itself
>> rather than
>> on whether someone would call them slackers for leaving at 3 
p.m.  to
>> watch
>> a daughter's soccer game.  And since the bulk of his staff 
consists of
>> software developers, designers and others doing high-level 
creative work,
>> that was essential.  "For them, it's all about the 
craftsmanship.  And
>> they
>> need a lot of autonomy."
>>  People still had specific goals they had to reachbfor example, 
completing
>> a project by a certain time or ringing up a particular number of 
sales.
>>  And if they needed help, Gunther was there to assist.  But he 
decided
>> against tying those goals to compensation.  "That creates a 
culture that
>> says it's all about money and not enough about the work." Money, 
he
>> believes, is only a "threshold motivator." People must be paid 
well and be
>> able to take care of their families, he says.  But once a 
company meets
>> this baseline, dollars and cents don't much affect performance 
and
>> motivation.  Indeed, Gunther thinks that in a ROWE environment, 
employees
>>>every far less likely to jump to another job for a $10,000 or
>> even $20,000
>> increase in salary.  The freedom they have to do great work is 
more
>> valuable, and harder to match, than a pay raise-and employeebs 
spouses,
>> partners and families are among a ROWE's staunchest advocates.
>>  "More companies will migrate to this as more business owners my 
age come
>> up.  My dad's generation views human beings as human resources.  
They're
>> the
>> two-by-fours you need to build your house," he says.  "For me, 
it's a
>> partnership between me and the employees.  They're not 
resources.  They're
>> partners." And partners, like all of us, need to direct their 
own lives.
>>  We forget sometimes that "management" does not emanate from 
nature.  It's
>> not like a tree or a river.  It's like a television or a 
bicycle.  It's
>> something that humans invented.  As the strategy guru Gary Hamel 
has
>> observed, management is a technology.  And like Motivation 2.0, 
it's a
>> technology that has grown creaky.  While some companies have 
oiled the
>> gears a bit, and plenty more have paid lip service to the same, 
at its
>> core, management hasn't changed much in 100 years.  Its central 
ethic
>> remains control; its chief tools remain extrinsic motivators.  
That leaves
>> it largely out of sync with the non-routine, right-brained 
abilities on
>> which many of the world's economies now depend.  But could its 
most
>> glaring
>> weakness run deeper? Is management, as it's currently 
considered, out of
>> sync with human nature itself?
>>  The idea of management (that is, management of people rather 
than
>> management of, say, supply chains) is built on certain 
assumptions about
>> the basic natures of those being managed.  It presumes that to 
take action
>> or move forward, we need a prod-that absent a reward or 
punishment, we'd
>> remain happily and inertly in place.  It also presumes that once 
people do
>> get moving, they need direction-that without a firm and reliable 
guide,
>> they'd wander.
>>  But is that really our fundamental nature? Or, to use yet 
another
>> computer
>> metaphor, is that our "default setting"? When we enter the 
world, are we
>> wired to be passive and inert? Or are we wired to be active and 
engaged?
>> I'm convinced it's the latter-that our basic nature is to be 
curious and
>> self-directed.  And I say that not because I'm a dewy-eyed 
idealist, but
>> because I've been around young children and because my wife and 
I have
>> three kids of our own.  Have you ever seen a 6-month-old or a 
1-year-old
>> who's not curious and self-directed? I havenbt.  That's how we 
are out of
>> the box.  If, at age 14 or 43, we're passive and inert, that's 
not because
>> it's our nature.  It's because something flipped our default 
setting.
>>  That something could well be management-not merely how bosses 
treat us at
>> work, but also how the broader ethos has leeched into schools, 
families
>> and many other aspects of our lives.  Perhaps management isn't 
responding
>> to our supposedly natural state of passive inertia.  Perhaps 
management is
>> one of the forces that's switching our default setting and 
producing that
>> state.
>>  Now, that's not as insidious as it sounds.  Submerging part of 
our nature
>> in the name of economic survival can be a sensible move.  My 
ancestors did
>> it; so did yours.  And there are times, even now, when we have 
no other
>> choice.
>>  But today economic accomplishment, not to mention personal 
fulfillment,
>> more often swings on a different hinge.  It depends not on 
keeping our
>> nature submerged but on allowing it to surface.  It requires 
resisting the
>> temptation to control people-and instead doing everything we can 
to
>> reawaken their deep-seated sense of autonomy.  This innate 
capacity for
>> self-direction is at the heart of Motivation 3.0 and Type I 
behavior.
>>  The fundamentally autonomous quality of human nature is central 
to
>> self-determination theory (SDT).  Edward Deci, a professor of 
psychology
>> at
>> the University of Rochester, and Richard Ryan, a former student 
who is now
>> Deci's colleague, cite autonomy as one of three basic human 
needs.  (The
>> others are the need for competence and the need for 
relatedness.) And of
>> the three, it's the most important-the sun around which SDT's 
planets
>> orbit.  In the 1980's, as they progressed in their work, Deci 
and Ryan
>> moved
>> away from categorizing behavior as either extrinsically 
motivated or
>> intrinsically motivated to categorizing it as either controlled 
or
>> autonomous.  "Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a 
full sense of
>> volition and choice," they write in a 2008 article in Canadian 
Psychology,
>> "whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the 
experience of
>> pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from 
forces
>> perceived to be external to the self."
>>  Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence.  It's 
not the
>> rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the 
American cowboy.
>>  It means acting with choice-which means we can be both 
autonomous and
>> happily interdependent with others.  And while the idea of 
independence
>> has national and political reverberations, autonomy appears to 
be a human
>> concept rather than a Western one.  Researchers have found a 
link between
>> autonomy and overall well-being not only in North America and 
Western
>> Europe, but in Russia, Turkey and South Korea.  Even in 
high-poverty
>> non-Western locales like Bangladesh, social scientists have 
found that
>> autonomy is something that people seek and that improves their 
lives.
>>  A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual 
performance and
>> attitude.  According to a cluster of recent behavioral science 
studies,
>> autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, 
better
>> grades, enhanced persistence at school and, in sporting 
activities, higher
>> productivity, less burnout and greater psychological well-being.  
Those
>> effects carry over to the workplace.  In 2004, Deci and Ryan, 
along with
>> Paul Baard of Fordham University, carried out a study of workers 
at an
>> American investment bank.  The three researchers found greater 
job
>> satisfaction among employees whose bosses offered "autonomous 
support."
>> These bosses saw issues from the employee's point of view, gave 
meaningful
>> feedback and information, provided ample choice over what to do 
and how to
>> do it and encouraged employees to take on new projects.  The 
resulting
>> enhancement in job satisfaction, in turn, led to higher 
performance on the
>> job.  What's more, the benefits that autonomy confers on 
individuals
>> extend
>> to their organizations.  For examples, researchers at Cornell 
University
>> studied 320 small businesses, half of which granted workers 
autonomy; the
>> other half relied on top-down direction.  The businesses that 
offered
>> autonomy grew at four times the rate of the control-oriented 
firms and had
>> one-third the employee turnover.
>>  Yet too many businesses remain woefully behind the science.  
Most
>> 21st-century notions of management presume that, in the end, 
people are
>> pawns rather than players.  British economist Francis Green, to 
cite just
>> one example, points to the lack of individual discretion at work 
as the
>> main explanation for declining productivity and job satisfaction 
in the
>> U.K.  Management still revolves largely around supervision, 
"if-then"
>> rewards and other forms of control.  That's even true of the 
kinder,
>> gentler Motivations 2.1 approach that whispers sweetly about 
things like
>> "empowerment" and "flexibility."
>>  Indeed, just consider the very notion of "empowerment." It 
presumes that
>> the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of 
it into the
>> waiting bowls of grateful employees.  But that's not autonomy.  
That's
>> just
>> a slightly more civilized form of control.  Or take management's 
embrace
>> of
>> "flex time." Ressler and Thompson call it a "con game," and 
they're right.
>>  Flexibility simply widens the fences and occasionally opens the 
gates.
>> It,
>> too, is little more than control in sheep's clothing.  The words
>> themselves
>> reflect presumptions that run against both the texture of the 
times and
>> the nature of the human condition.  In short, management isn't 
the
>> solution; it's the problem.
>>  Perhaps it's time to toss the very word "management" onto the 
linguistic
>> ash heap alongside "icebox" and "horseless carriage." This era 
doesn't
>> call for better management.  It calls for a renaissance of 
self-direction.
>>  This is an edited excerpt from Drive: The Surprising Truth 
About What
>> Motivates Us by Daniel H.  Pink, published by Riverhead Books.  
(can) 2009
>> by
>> Daniel H.  Pink.
>> B) Ode Magazine USA, Inc.  and Ode Luxembourg 2009 (further 
information in
>> Privacy and Copyright)
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