Positive Leadership has also been recognised as a Top 50 Leadership Expert to Follow on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter @posleadership


LEADERSHIP IS A PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WHICH MAXIMISES THE EFFORTS OF OTHERS TOWARDS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A SHARED GOAL.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

How a 'Non-Policy' on Holidays Can Be The Break You Need

Silicon Valley success story, Netflix, shows how a non-policy on holidays can provide the break you need. 

The idea is that freedom and responsibility, long considered fundamentally incompatible, actually go together quite well.

In much white-collar work today, where one good idea can be orders of magnitude more valuable than a dozen mediocre ones, the link between the time you spend and the results you produce is murkier. Results are what matter. How you got there, or how long it took, is less relevant.

In contrast to the Netflix story, most of us believe the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money - the 'carrot-and-stick' approach.

However as Daniel H. Pink says in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - and as the Netflix story shows - this is a mistake.

Instead, the secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. 

In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action. 

Drive is the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live. 

Share/Save/Bookmark