Creative Work

Studies continue to show that “controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity,” according to Daniel Pink. And because our new knowledge economy depends on creativity, an increasing number of corporations both large and small are finding that Management 2.0 practices are failing to deliver. So they are adopting Agile and related methodologies with varying degrees of success.

Creative people are not motivated by external rewards or the fear of punishment. This was the model from the industrial economy, when most people worked in large factories, and struggled for dignity in the workplace.

Why Do We Create Anything?

Creative work requires a new operating system to thrive. Pink calls this new operating system Motivation 3.0. This operating system assumes that human beings are motivated without rewards and punishments by three elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Creative and innovative work requires these elements – that we feel the we have freedom in what we work on and how we do it, that we are able to get better at what we do, to develop a craft, and to become a master, and, most importantly, that we are working on something which aligns with our deep personal purpose.

What Practices Do We Need to Unleash Our Motivation?

Agile, Lean, and Kanban methods represent examples of Motivation 3.0 compliant “software”. These methods focus on managing the work (more specifically the flow of work), not the workers themselves. By contrast, Motivation 2.0 is based on rewarding and punishing the workers individually.

The cornerstones of autonomy are self-organization and self-management. Motivation 3.0 impels people to organize their own work and to participate in their own economic destiny. To have “skin in the game” so to speak.

How Do We Facilitate these Practices and Methods?

The values of Agile and Kanban enable an intrinsic motivation enabling environment. Jurgen Appelo bundles these and other experimental practices together and refers to all of this Motivation 3.0 compliant “software” as Management 3.0. These practices are seen as the key to enhancing creativity and increasing the delivery of value.

The core Agile, Lean, and Kanban values anchor all of the related frameworks and practices. They are: transparency, balance, sustainability, flow, collaboration, evolution, customer focus, leadership, understanding, agreement, trust, respect (and dignity), and self-organization.

How is Work Managed Today?

Most enterprises in the U.S. operate autocratically, with a small percentage of the corporation (the CEO together with the board of directors) making all of the critical decisions in their own self-interest at the expense of the majority of employees.

Networked Organizations – What Might be a Better Way of Organizing Work?

Workers looking to not only survive but to thrive in this new creative, knowledge-based economy require a new “hardware”, a new platform, a new Motivation 3.0 compliant organizational structure, an Economy 3.0. These organizations would be arranged as networks, rather than as hierarchies.

What Are the Components of High-performing Teams and Learning Organizations?

High-performing teams must be self-directed and self-organized. Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School together with the Agile community understand this implicitly.

In her study with Google, Edmondson discovered that the most critical component in developing high-performing teams was “psychological safety“. Safe teams are teams which exhibit trust and mutual respect, where team members are free to be themselves.

Unfortunately most workspaces operating under a Management 2.0 operating system are filled with fear instead of safety. Hierarchies and power distance aggravate the problem, creating an environment of Yes men (and women) who know that if they speak up they will lose their livelihood.

Learning organizations are safe places. And unsafe places cannot learn.

To increase safety, all members of the workspace* may want to explore the following.

• cultivate networks rather than hierarchies.
• team across boundaries, whether they be hierarchical, functional, or extra-organizational.
• de-concentrate power and reduce power distances (at least structurally).
• execute controlled mini-experiments regularly, to maximize learning opportunities.
• accept failures without judgement and mine them for lessons learned, and recognize transparency, visibility, and vulnerability as strengths, exercising them widely.

* In the highest performing environments every member becomes a servant-leader, making and meeting commitments to others, and doing no harm.

What Impedes the Formation of High-performing Teams and Learning Organizations?

According to Victor Hugo Certuche, an Enterprise Agile/DevOps Coach, the bureaucracy, the concentration of power at the corporate level, constrains enterprises, particularly large ones, from becoming Agile, high-performing, learning organizations.

[T]here are many reasons [which account for abandoned Agile transformations], but the ones I have encountered are always related to thinking that an Agile transformation is a local endeavor. Teams can certainly achieve a good level of Agile maturity, but they will be contained and ultimately strangled by the bureaucracy of the large organization when the Agile effort is not coordinated at the corporate level.

So what is a bureaucracy?

What are Some Possible Ways Forward? Self-Management and Self-Direction

Therefore, if an enterprise wants to become an Agile, high-performing, learning organization, it will need to become self-directed and self-organized, not only at the team level, but at the enterprise level itself. In order to realize this in a sustainable fashion, it will need to become an employee-owned cooperative, or better yet a worker self-directed enterprise.

To echo the words of Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we must democratize the enterprise.

Intrinsic motivation is maximized when employees decide for themselves what they are going to produce, how they are going to produce it, and what they are going to do with the profits. In my second podcast with the Millennials, my guests came to the consensus that the cause of the high-levels of disengagement in the workforce was the inability to participate in the direction of most enterprises, in essence to co-create a compelling mission, to deliver on it, and to participate in its successes.

There is nothing radical or even novel about this idea. The Lowell Mill Girls concluded this over 150 years ago. Here is Noam Chomsky quoting the Lowell Mill Girls from “Chomsky on Democracy and Education“, edited by C.P. Otero:

“Those who work in the mills ought to own them, not have the status of machines ruled by private despots who are entrenching monarchic principles on democratic soil as they drive downwards freedom and rights, civilization, health, morals and intellectuality in the new commercial feudalism.”

According to Richard Wolff, professor of economics, author, radio host, and speaker, worker self-directed enterprises yield positive results for the greater society.

They reduce social and income inequality.

• Employees would never decide to pay the CEO 400 times more than the average worker.
• Employees would never decide to hire cheaper foreign workers under the auspices of some specious H1B visa program to replace their jobs.
• Employees would never decide to fire themselves and move their factory to a low-cost country in Asia or Central or South America.

They strengthen the community, and make it safer and healthier.

• Employees would never decide to use and dump toxic chemicals into the community in which they and their families live.

They strengthen democracy and protect the Commons.

• Employees who decide for themselves how the profits are appropriated and distributed will earn enough to join the middle class. The size and influence of the working and middle classes will grow.
• Self-management, and better yet self-direction, will increase the awareness of employees, making the citizenry better informed, and less likely to vote and to act against their self-interest.
• They weaken oligarchic rule. The power of the elites will diminish, and they will no longer have a disproportionate influence on legislatures and elections.
• Our shared natural resources and complex ecosystems, which provide us all with food, fuel, and building materials, will be better protected and cultivated.

Most significantly, worker self-directed enterprises will bring an end to a century and a half of wage slavery.

• All of the workers would own the enterprise. The workers will be both employees and employers. They are no longer being forced. They work under their own initiative, not on command.

About Dan & Agile and Beyond:

Dan Feldman is the creator and host of the Agile and Beyond podcast. With Agile practitioners, design thinkers, team builders, organization designers, entrepreneurs, and visionaries, he explores the future of work, education, and society. With the digital age demanding greater collaboration, enhanced creativity, and heightened agility, he examines avant-garde, responsive, collaborative team and organization designs as well as the shifts in our individual and collective perception of experience and purpose. Tune in!

Listen and Subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or RSS.