Over the summer the Alliance for Innovation Ambassador’s dove into Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  Innovation Ambassadors took an in-depth look at how to awaken their own motivation as well as how to encourage Type I behavior in their organizations.  
   
Pink introduced the three nutrients to nourish Motivation 3.0: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.  
Motivation 3.0 goes beyond the traditional carrot and stick approach of motivation to what he calls Motivation 3.0, or Type I behavior.  Type I is concerned with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself whereas Type X and other behaviors are fueled by extrinsic desires – those external rewards to what that activity leads.

During the Alliance’s Big Ideas Meeting in Ann Arbor September 10-12, we took some time to sit down and talk with three local government professionals and get their thoughts on how their organizations work to promote Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose - the three essentials Pink believes ignites us as individuals and organizations.  

Many of you took our online survey and provided your thoughts and ideas on many of the concepts discussed by Pink.  We took those same questions and had a conversation with Jim Keene, City Manager, Palo Alto, CA; Karen Windon, Deputy County Administrator, Manatee County, FL; and Victor Lauria, Assistant Police Chief, Novi, MI to offer Innovation Ambassadors another perspective on and applications of autonomy, mastery and purpose.
 
How is your organization or how can local governments more effectively encourage autonomy with employees and encourage them to create and act on their great ideas?

KW:  In Manatee, our philosophy has been to question everything and take action when something needs to be done.  We are working on building a culture of empowerment – we say to employees “fix something when it needs it, you don’t need to ask permission.”

Also, in the manager’s office we are protective of our calendars.  We have designated time every week to think about innovation and how that looks in our organization.

JK:  The question is how do you scale and distribute this idea of empowering people?   It’s about creating a framework for those who want to assume autonomy and if it works, creating opportunities for those who buy into the idea.  In Palo Alto, we are working on a change initiative and we’ve created a steering committee to create design teams.   70 employees applied and interviewed to be on the teams – employees from all across the hierarchy and organization – we spend a lot of time working up and down and across the organization.   The test then is what happens in these teams and how does the initiative grow and sustain itself.  We carve out time to work on it and are starting small, asking ‘what are the suggestions that can be made to begin building momentum?’  We have taken the approach of starting small and tapping into the places where there are inclinations are for change.

We are at the stage right now to see how we move the work from our design teams forward and build scale.  We are starting with implementing 1 idea a month for a year, regardless of the idea, to show that leadership is listening and demonstrate to employees that they are being taken seriously. The formal organization needs to learn how to do this and its going to be a 3-year learning process.  We have to build trust and capacity to build that momentum and scale.  It takes time.

VL:  Although there is hierarchy, the idea is that we are creating leadership at all levels of the organization.  Everyone brings great talent to the table and the goal is try to bring out the talents in every individual at every level.  We’ve seen a change in how staff thinks about leadership; they are now realizing that leadership is difficult, especially when you are trying to make things happen in teams.  Also, you can’t put out this idea of engagement to everyone - start small, have connections first and let those connections and relationships grow.  The culture begins then spreads throughout the organization – it’s a risky venture at first because people don’t know if these initiatives/teams are traps.  You are venturing into a land that is unfamiliar – so to have connections first is key.  This is not fast!    And as management we have to instill in the staff that it is okay to fail.  As managers we don’t get it right 100% of the time either.

KW:  Exactly, we have to push back when employees come to us asking ‘…is it okay?...is it okay?’ because if you are always giving permission then they think they have to always ask for it.  

VL:  This is learning process because everyone doesn’t always get it right all of the time.

What about offering peer-to-peer rewards?  

JK:  The minute you make this a programmatic ‘thank you” it becomes unauthentic.  You start to hear ‘why them, not me?’ or it becomes a mechanism for recognizing the cool/popular team.  I think we need to consider what the underlying messages are – what are they saying –and find out if people on an individual basis know how to acknowledge and recognize others.

KW:  This is tough because you are trying to balance the focus of being externally driven (the recognition) versus internally driven (why you took action).  We seem to be hung up on the public show.  It is important to just say, ‘I appreciate you’ and use it to foster a sense of kindness in the organization.  

VL:  In Novi, we work on authentic, personal communication and fostering a sense of kindness.  It’s about the individual and culture versus getting recognition publically – things like hand written cards and taking time to authentically say ‘thanks’ stays with you.

What are ways in which you try to close the gap between perceptions and reality in your organization?  For example, what management believes vs. the reality of people working around them?   

VL:  One way in which the City of Novi closes this gap is through our continually efforts to push information throughout the organization.  The City Manager dedicates time - the 1st Monday of each month – to do exactly this, push information throughout the organization.

JK:  Go and see if your experiences in the organization are the way you say they are.  Managers have to be authentic and provide lots of points of access and opportunity – and peer to peer, people have to see things are happening.  I invited all employees to a series of town halls (20) and think about and answer the following questions:

What kind of city do I want to live in?
What type of organization do you want be belong to?
What type of boss and co-workers do you want to have?
What is our City like?
What is our organization like?

Then we asked them to look to see what gaps exist between what people want and where we are.  What ideas did they have to close the gap?

VL:  It’s about having those initial connections and relations to begin to identify the gap of wants and experiences.  

So how then do you start to build a common sense of purpose and encourage a team mentality?

VL:  In Novi we use Venture Teams.  Each team defines their purpose on the front end and we use them to build a sense of autonomy in laying out the problem and allow them to address it.  For the Police Department in particular, we have open discussions about what is the value of the work we do.  

KW:  In Manatee County, we are actively engaging the middle manager in building and understanding the purpose.  This is critical because they work as the conduit and are spreading this sense of purpose.    We host a leadership academy primarily with middle and supervisory level staff to create this common sense of purpose and as a result they are becoming rising stars in the organization.

JK: Our purpose in Palo Alto is to reinvent the American Dream which is a lofty goal.  So to connect this lofty goal and make it personal we have to talk to them (employees) about what this means to them.
Remember to always talk to people where they are.

Lastly, Pink talks about creating a physical workplace that encourages autonomy, mastery, and purpose?  As one Ambassador stated during the webinar, “Are we thinking about the message local governments send in the physical space we create?

JK: People know I care about beauty and design of physical spaces – aesthetics is very important especially how work and meeting space is laid out.  One example: we have created an innovation playground that is symbolic and is a space you could use to have fun – it’s the ‘play’ piece.  But every space sends a message.  We need to take control of this fact.

VL:  If someone walked into a room and a detective was sitting on a bean bag with a laptop their head would probably implode.  Design and space is important and it’s about what makes them comfortable and helps them feel engaged.

JK:  A manager can lead in this effort.  At Facebook, they have a facebook ball – every time a visitor leaves the building they take off their visitor name tag and stick it to what is now a big ball created by every Facebook visitor.  And growing.  This simple concept and gesture reminds everyone they are part of something bigger. People dramatically underestimate the power of the little things that contribute to providing ‘experience.’  We can be cynical about such things but they really matter.  Follow your instincts.

Special thank you to Jim Keene, Karen Windon and Victor Lauria for sharing their thoughts and insights with us!