Quotes About Autonomy

Our current business operating system— which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators—doesn't work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Type I homework test by asking yourself three questions: • Am I offering students any autonomy over how and when to do this work? • Does this assignment promote mastery by offering a novel, engaging task (as opposed to rote reformulation of something already covered in class)? • Do my students understand the purpose of this assignment? That is, can they see how doing this additional activity at home contributes to the larger enterprise in which the class is engaged?

Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice," they write, "whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self.

Only contingent rewards—if you do this, then you'll get that—had the negative effect. Why? "If-then" rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy.

Fully detached beats semidetached.

A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude.

Does your boss allow you to do your best work?

According to a cluster of recent behavioral science studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychological well-being.3

economic accomplishment, not to mention personal fulfillment, more often swings on a different hinge. It depends not on keeping our nature submerged but on allowing it to surface. It requires resisting the temptation to control people—and instead doing everything we can to reawaken their deep-seated sense of autonomy.

Daniel H. Pink

For work that requires more than just climbing, rung by rung, up a ladder of instructions, rewards are more perilous. The best way to avoid the seven deadly flaws of extrinsic motivators is to avoid them altogether or to downplay them significantly and instead emphasize the elements of deeper motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace BY RICARDO SEMLER

Intrinsic motivation is of great importance for all economic activities. It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives.

Puget Sound Community School. Like Sudbury and Big Picture, this tiny independent school in Seattle, Washington, gives its students a radical dose of autonomy, turning the "one size fits all" approach of conventional schools on its head.

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation BY EDWARD L. DECI WITH RICHARD FLASTE

Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don't have schedules. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.

We're born to be players, not pawns.

Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.

Type I" behavior, a way of thinking and an approach to business grounded in the real science of human motivation and powered by our third drive—our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

W]e have three innate psychological needs, competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we're motivated, productive, and happy. When they're thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.

Indeed, just consider the very notion of empowerment. It presumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees. But that's not autonomy. That's just a slightly more civilized form of control.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote." TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO

1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives (2) Mastery—the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It's not the rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the American cowboy. It means acting with choice—which means we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others.