Autonomy, mastery and purpose for everybody

It’s good to be reminded again of the psychology courses i took back in Magdeburg: In this TED talk Dan Pink talks about motivation for tasks that particularly involve thinking and problem solving. He cites several scientific studies in psychology that show how creative tasks are sometimes even impeded by extrinsic motivators such as rewards and penalties. He makes a good case for running businesses on the basis of intrinsic motivators autonomy, mastery, and purpose:

Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.

Sounds pretty exciting, if not revolutionary! However, Dan’s distinction between creative and mechanical tasks may sound a bit classist. He is focussing on a new operating system for the knowledge workers troubled by facebook and procrastination. The rest of the workforce, it seems, is still well-served with sticks and carrots:

That routine, rule-based, left brain work, certain kinds of accounting, certain kinds of financial analysis, certain kinds of computer programing, has become fairly easy to outsource, fairly easy to automate. Software can do it faster. Low-cost providers around the world can do it cheaper. So what really matters are the more right-brained creative, conceptual kinds of abilities.

I am not so sure if this is what really matters. Doesn’t everybody deserve autonomy, mastery and purpose? I wonder if balanced job complexes would be more suitable for this goal by having workers do both creative and mechanical tasks, using both sides of the brain, and having a diverse set of motivators for different types of tasks.

via swissmiss