Over the last years I have repeatedly encountered 3 words defining the current notion for motivation: 1. Autonomy, 2. Mastery, 3. Purpose. This notion has often appeared in presentations about tech culture, notably at Zalando (thanks Eric Bowman) but also often emerges in company cultures such as the one at Solvemate (thanks Christian Blomberg).

So I carried the notion with me till I felt urgency to go beyound the simple words. Ultimately I landed at presumably the source of it: the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink.

Without telling you too much and spoiling the read here are some of my takeaways for motivation:

• Motivation 2.0 in the form of carrot and stick (rewards based) is inefficient and unpredicatable.
• Motivation 3.0 defined by the 3 aforementioned words offers the ruleset for maintaining performance and job satisfaction of a present day person.
  • Meaning of Autonomy – to hold your life/job with your hands and direct it the way you deem necessary.
  • Meaning of Mastery – to constantly learn and improve on a subject that matters.
  • Meaning of Purpose – to dedicate to something bigger than our own self.
• Motivation 3.0 seems to almost always outeprform Motivation 2.0. Even in the short term.
• FedEx days at Atlassian. Nowadays called ShipIt this is a day long retreat for evey engineer in the company to create a new solution or fix something that annoys them. Execution matters but best idea wins.
• The concept of ROWE – results only work environment, or else said no time keeping (check in/out).
• Super clear and stripped down to the basics insights from Jim Collins (by the way also a great author) about self-motivation – 4 simple rules how to instigate such culture.

On the matter of ROWE quite curious how many companies run this model, it seems to be getting good traction in creative industries. Yet, wondering whether teams do not alienated by not spending time together.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book and plan to revert to it from time to time. Have you read it and what do you think?