Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

First, they provide employees with what I call “Goldilocks tasks”—challenges that are not too hot and not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly simple.

He persuaded managers to configure work assignments so that employees had clear objectives and a way to get quick feedback. And instead of meeting with their charges for once-a-year performance reviews, managers sat down with employees one-on-one six times a year, often for as long as ninety minutes, to discuss their level of engagement and path to

have realized that creating flow-friendly environments that help people move toward mastery can increase productivity and satisfaction at work.4

Hand everyone a blank three-by-five-inch card. Then ask each person to write down his or her one-sentence answer to the following question: “What is our company’s (or organization’s) purpose?”

Of course, because most workplaces still reverberate with the assumptions of the old operating system, transitioning to autonomy won’t—often can’t—happen in one fell swoop. If we pluck people out of controlling environments, when they’ve known nothing else, and plop them in a ROWE or an environment of undiluted autonomy, they’ll struggle. Organizat

Then We Came to the End BY JOSHUA FERRIS

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility BY JAMES P. CARSE

Meantime, while you’re investigating Montessori, check out two other approaches to learning that also promote Type I behavior: the Reggio Emilia philosophy for the education of young children and the Waldorf schools. For more information, visit these websites: www.montessori-ami.org, www.montessori.org, www.amshq.org, www.reggioalliance.org, and ww

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln BY DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN