Purpose-focused propaganda doesn’t benefit change initiatives

Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose: the trifecta of intrinsic motivation; and yet, so often entirely ignored.

Often, those managing change initiatives spend a lot of effort on communicating the purpose—if they understand it at all, e.g. in the case of Lean or Agile.

• How many spend time to understand the purpose of the “customer” of the initiative? Barely any.

• How many spend time to figure out the “Product-Market Fit” between the initiative’s purpose and the “customer’s” purpose? Practically none. Some places might invest in broadcast-style training to increase people’s mastery—usually in the form of standardized modules disseminating the initiative’s “propaganda” with minimum effort and maximum scalability (webinars…)

• How many also dare offer job rotations or “side-quests” to those who are open to drinking from a firehose and increase their mastery? Very, very few. Very few places also provide the necessary autonomy to complete the puzzle. This also includes autonomy to do things in new ways resulting from things the person has learned both within and outside of the work environment, BTW.

Is it such a big wonder that most change initiatives are used primarily as resume-padding material until the next buzzword-driven and tone-deaf initiative comes along?

You can’t turn a ship around by bringing in clerics to chant the freshest hymns.

As we say in Greece…

“Το πολύ το κυρελέησον το βαριέται κι ο παπάς.”
(loosely translated: “even the priest gets bored of too much blessing.”)