Attainment of “Mastery” is bound by the following three principles.
Dan Pink’s book Drive makes a mention of the same.
1) Mastety is a “Mindset” – Continuity in excellence needs a learning mindset rather than a performane mindset
2) Mastery involves “Pain“- Excelling in a particular field needs a lot of personal sacrifices.
3) Mastery always follows an “Asymptotic” pattern – Attainment of mastery will never touch the ceiling , even though the final destination may seem very near.
Google , 3M have been very well known for providjng a lot of autonomy to employees to showcase their creativity.
In an effort to create a Result Oriented Work Environment(ROWE), it has historically provided employees a leeway of using 20% of their time to do something outside their realm of work.
This autonomy provided to employees have incidentally given birth to these iconic creations.
Dan Pink’s book Drive makes a mention of this term.
To make customer service more interesting , JetBlue had started diverting customer calls to homes of service representatives , without any monitoring.
This was contrary of the popular practice of offshoring such work for cost savings..
Components of intrinsic motivation to help switch to Type I (Intrinsic motivation) personality are:
1) Autonomy
2) Mastery
3) Purpose
Dan Pink in his book “Drive” makes a mention of the fact that “if-then” rewards better known as carrot/stick awards can be detrimental when it comes to instilling creativity and doing right brain oriented tasks.
Hence these rewards must be used with caution mostly for the purpose of getting done “left brain” oriented mundane tasks by making use of an external driver e.g. money.
Dan Pink in his book “Drive” makes a mention about these two types of personalities.
Type X – People who are driven by eXtrinsic motivation e.g. “if-then” rewards to get their job done.
Type I – People who are Intrinsically motivated by a non-monetary overarching purpose to make a difference in their daily lives.
In the modern conceptual age , we should all strive to move towards a Type I personality to attain fulfillment.
Dan Pink makes a mention of the different drivers for motivation for these two categories of work.
Right brain work – For e.g. work needing autonomy and creativity needs intrinsic motivation as the driver and leads to reduction in productivity if driven by money.
Carrot stick based motivation kills creativity and focuses absolutely in the short term to satisfy selfish motives.
Intrinsic motivation which cares for an overarching purpose rather than being driven by money , nurtures creativity and stands the test of time.
Once the sense of purpose is realised human brain loves intrinsic motivation to achieve fulfilment.
Intrinsic motivation wherein challenge I’m being able to a piece of work and joy in sharing it with others does motivate human beings in the modern era.
Look at Apache , Linux , Hadoop , git etc. and related communities where participants are engrossed in participating in sharing ideas and we can understand the power of intrinsic motivation as a major driver in the modern age.
This necessitates shifting focus from traditional modes of motivational factors.