The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement which is what we want in the workforce today as people are doing more complicated, sophisticated things self-direction is better. Let me give you some examples of this of the most radical forms of self-direction in the workplace, that lead to good results. Let's start with this company right here, Atlassian an Australian company. It's a software company and they do something really cool. Once a quarter on Thursday afternoon, they say to their developers "For the next 24 hours, you can work on anything you want. You can work at it the way you want. You can work at it with whomever you want. All we ask is that you show the results to the company at the end of those 24 hours." and this fun kind of meeting, not a star chamber session but this fun meeting with beer and cake and fun and other things like that. It turns out that one day of pure undiluted autonomy has led to a whole array of fixes for existing software a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise have never emerged. One day. Now this is not an "if-then" incentive. This is not the sort of thing that I would have done 3 years ago before I knew this research. I would have said "You want people to be creative and innovative?" Give them a fricken innovation bonus. If you could do something cool, I'll give you 2,500 dollars. They're not doing this at all. They're essentially saying you probably want to do something interesting. Let me just get out of your way. One day of autonomy produces things that never emerge.