drive

SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT DAN PINK’S LATEST BOOK DRIVE…DON’T READ THIS!

Well, this that out of the way…it took me about halfway through the book for it to really start to think in.  pink talks lots about autonomy and mastery and it was the autonomy part that really hit home and got me thinking about how much i have in my job.  of the four areas he mentions, i grade out pretty well:

task: i’m middle of the road on this one – i enjoy a good balance of what i am told to do and what i am able to come up with on my own 🙂  i can’t help but to think of all the people who talk about ideating (spelling?) like seth godin in some of his work.

time: this is the area that ranks lowest on the autonomy level for me.  for the most part, i’m told when to be here and when to leave.  there is some flexibility, but not enough to really make this aspect of what i do autonomous, but i do understand the reasoning which makes it easy to understand.  if i thought the reasons were arbitrary i might have more issue with this…but i don’t.

technique: lots of autonomy here.  i am blessed with a team leader who allows me lots of freedom in terms of how the work gets done, provided the quality is high and the product is up to snuff.  good stuff.

team: similar to technique, when given a task i have the autonomy to find those people that would best help me accomplish my goal for the task.  i guess the limiting factor is that i am confined to those who work around me, but i imagine that would be true of any office, right?  or perhaps, as the brick and mortar buildings start to melt away, teams have many more possibilities and perhaps that is my fault for not always tapping into other networks.

i’d like to talk more about the ideas in the book, but this is what has been swimming around my head the past few days.  i have to say that i am pleased with the way i rank out in these areas.  i wonder what i can do to change the areas i am not totally satisfied with?  is it even under my control to do so?

 

inspiring words from TIME

TIME’s most recent issue feature twitter as the cover story, never has there been a more appropriate time with respect to what i do.  aside from the run down of what twitter does and how it has impacted our culture there are some wise words that can be found near the end of the article, a succession of 3 paragraphs that had me puffing out my chest and renewed (in a sense) my faith in the innovation of our country.  here is the excerpt…

But what actually happened to American innovation during that period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn’t build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

in a time when we are constantly hearing about jobs being outsourced and the standing of US know-how being called in to question in light of the accomplishments in other parts of the world, it was nice to see that there is a different type of change being influenced by products and innovations right here at home.  the article is a good one, check it out.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604-1,00.html