Business Insight Zone

“Look what I made!”

Think of the joy in the voice of a child who’s just made something. It might not be a striking work of art, and it might not mean anything to anyone besides the child and her parents. But that spirit — of discovery, of possibility — can make a big difference in how the child thinks.

When I talk to people who are unfulfilled in their work, what’s often missing is the sense that they might be able to use their work to discover something interesting, to explore possibilities, or to extend their selves in new directions. They’re stifled — not just logistically but emotionally — by bureaucracy, onerous rules, long meetings, wasted time.

What the heck are you talking about, Tim?

I picture someone asking’ “Did you just say, ‘extend their selves in new directions’? I thought this was a proper, grown-up business blog.”

Too often in the world of work, we pay lip service to ideas like creativity without acknowledging that real creativity usually happens for people who have some emotional — not just financial — vested interest in the outcome of their inquiry. “Innovation” isn’t a strategy you implement in the abstract, or a switch you flip one day when you come into the office. It’s tied to the freedom and positive sense of challenge that people feel while they’re doing their work.

Feel-good mumbo-jumbo?

The other day my blogging hero, Kathy Sierra, said something about this in a tweet:

Amazing how many powerful brain hacks in the past suffered from positioning as ‘new-age-foo-foo’, but now science starts explaining.

Kathy has long used the insights of brain science to help others “kick ass,” as she’s fond of putting it. Since she teaches computer programming, her version of this is centered around users of the software. If you’re building a product, you’ll do well to adopt the same goal. And if you’re a manager, your work ought to center around the people who work for you and how they can excel.

But don’t take my word for it, or Kathy’s. Consider this, from the pioneering psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Finding Flow:

. . . [H]uman beings feel best in flow, when they are fully involved in meeting a challenge, solving a problem, discovering something new. Most activities that produce flow also have clear goals, clear rules, immediate feedback — a set of external demands that focuses our attention and makes demands of our skills.

Ponder that for a sec — all parts of it.

The joy of creation goes hand in hand with bottom-line success

The girl in the picture is “fully involved in meeting a challenge” that has “a set of external demands that focuses [her] attention and makes demands of [her] skills.” In her case, the challenge is making a chalk drawing on the sidewalk, which I’m guessing didn’t require a lot of convincing.

For your team, the challenges will be quite different: to improve some part of sales, marketing, operations, finance, IT, strategy, et cetera. But the sense of joy (read: personal fulfillment) can still be there, along with the meeting of goals (read: business fulfillment), IF the people on your team are allowed to find flow.

Csikszentmihalyi’s research shows that people achieve a lot of satisfaction — even doing things they’re made to do — when the parameters just mentioned apply. But keep in mind: flow requires that people have uninterrupted stretches of time when they can devote their full attention to the problem at hand, just as the girl is giving her full attention to her drawing.

What does this mean for managers?

If you want your people to experience the joy of creation while making hay for your organization, you can start by doing these things:

• Holding fewer and shorter meetings, ideally grouped into narrower bands of the day;
• Abandoning micromanagement;
• Using shorter, more meaningful task lists;
• Working from a realistic sense of time and clear priorities;
• Making a systematic (not to say belligerent) reduction in “workiness.”

Will these changes be awkward? Probably. But consider the upside of giving your people the sense of fulfillment that only comes from kicking butt.

Companies known for their (highly profitable) focus on the joy of creation include Zappos, Threadless, Google, and 37signals. Wouldn’t you like to join them?

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Related posts:

• Kathy Sierra: BrainDeath by Micromanagement: The Zombie Function
• How Flow is like a good cup of coffee.
• “Workiness” is to work as “truthiness” is to truth.

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(Photo from the Franklin Park Library’s photostream.)

Category: Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Management, The business brain