Purpose or Relatedness..?
One is more important to a future-fit culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.
“Three innate psychological needs — competence, autonomy, and relatedness — when satisfied yield enhanced self-motivation and mental health and when thwarted lead to diminished motivation and well-being.” — Ryan and Deci 1
I was recently posed the following question:
“Geoff – a few years back I read Dan Pink’s book “Drive” — subtitled “The surprising truth about what motivates us”. In it he identifies three “elements” of intrinsic motivation — Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I recently heard you say something about this being adapted from behavioural science research and that this adaptation, in your opinion, removed something valuable. Can you say more?”
The ten minute Future-Fit Culture Frequently Asked Questions video below explores the above question.
Future-Fit Culture
How do autonomy, competence and relatedness feature in future-fit cultures of tightly coupled, embedded, distributed, iterative sense making, decision making, and action taking?
Autonomy is experienced when people feel appropriately and adequately involved in sense making and decision making so that any action taking makes sense.
Competence is the feeling of being effective in action taking, contributing to sense making and decision making, and co-creation of value with others, especially when the value created feels more than the sum of the individual contributions.
Relatedness is pivotal because effective sense making inevitably means combining our individual perspectives with the diverse perspectives of others in ways that enrich sense making, mutual understanding, respect and camaraderie.
Ready to take action?
My website provides a range of free resources to help you make the shift for yourselves, by yourselves, from “organisation as machine to be designed and operated” to “organisation as human community for shaping its future by creating continuous new value”.
Contact me to keynote at your next leadership conference or executive retreat, book one of my popular 90-minute "pick Geoff’s brains" sessions for senior executives, or tailor a custom coaching package for your development as a future-fit culture catalyst.
“Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being” by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, University of Rochester, NY, USA — in American Psychologist, January 2000 (p68).