It’s time to change... but how?
September 1, 2010 —
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It was 1997 and the World Wide Web was catching on. I was a magazine editor in charge of a medical technology publication with a readership scattered across Latin America. Miller Freeman, our publishing house, was building simple home pages for the bigger magazines, but my tiny niche was not a priority.
There was no explicit rule about websites, however, so many of my colleagues and I were having fun exploring HTML on our own. I quickly became obsessed and, despite my boss’ insistence that the Internet was a low priority, had soon built a website, forum and the world’s first (as far as I know) online bilingual radiology glossary. Though—shockingly—my effort was passed over for recognition by the Nobel committee, the website lived on for another decade as I became editor in chief of Software Development magazine. There, we continued to evolve our Web presence, albeit under stricter IT guidelines.
The Web and Java were special cases of technology that were not only revolutionary, but also accessible to the masses. Could the iPhone or social media applications be today’s equivalent? Even if they are, in 2010, there is a daunting ecosystem of software, hardware, platforms, vertical domains and methodologies to choose from. While technology land grabs still occur, most organizations don’t face such dazzling options when it comes to making a major change. And employees are practically inured to novelty, now that it occurs 24/7. In the face of these challenges, how do you bring your team up to speed quickly, smoothly and cheaply?
Let them play with it: Autonomous motivation
Fostering change organically is an explicit strategy for some companies. Google is famous for letting its employees spend 20% of their time exploring technology or working on projects of their own design. The science of workplace motivation seems to support such an approach, too; some studies have found that creative solutions to problems actually decrease under external pressure such as deadlines, bonuses or major prizes. But allowing employees to simply explore often makes managers nervous.
Related Search Term(s): agile
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