SAFe Principle 8: Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers.
This is an important principle because ‘unlocking the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers’ is a very different process to unlocking motivation in traditional workers working in a simple or complicated working environment.
In a simple environment, such as moving bricks from a truck to a warehouse, paying people more money equals an increased effort and greater productivity.
In a complicated environment, such as civil engineering and building bridges, paying more money tends to unlock motivation and ensure increased productivity too.
In a complex environment, where we need people to solve problems that have never been solved before or create products and solutions that have never existed before, we find that after a certain remuneration threshold has been achieved, adding more money does not improve motivation.
Knowledge workers
The agile manifesto places a great deal of emphasis on people and interactions over processes and tools, because when you invent new solutions and products, there is no formula to follow.
People can’t simply apply a ‘best practice’ and be guaranteed a result.
Sometimes, even though you have the best experts in the world on you team, you still aren’t guaranteed that you can solve the problem or build the solution that customers want.
It requires inspiration, autonomy, mastery, and the creation of an environment where people can excel. An environment filled with psychological safety and job security, so that people can experiment, fail, learn, and evolve without fear of losing their job or being humiliated for failing.
We also want knowledge workers to produce the most valuable product or solve the most compelling problems in the most elegant, valuable way.
It isn’t just about getting the job done. It is a commitment to continuous improvement and being laser focused on quality products, features, and solutions that truly delight customers.
So, we can’t treat knowledge workers the same way that we treat construction workers.
They are two completely different environments, with completely different variables, and with completely different levels of complexity.
This is why SAFe principle 8, unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers, is such a critical principle to achieve success in the SAFe agile framework.
About Value Glide
Value Glide are a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) consultancy, coaching practice, and training specialist who work with organizations to align business objectives with customer needs and wants.
As deeply experienced agile coaches and practitioners, our team are invested in continuous learning through each client engagement and use the data and evidence we gather from each implementation to inform our training, coaching, and consulting services.
In a nutshell, empirical process control or empiricism.
If you are thinking of adopting agile within your organization and have identified SAFe as a great agile framework to adopt, implement and improve your business agility, visit our SAFe Quickstart ART Launch program page or view our SAFe Consulting Services page.
If you have identified a need for an agile coach and SAFe coach to help your organization adopt and implement SAFe, visit our SAFe Coaching Services page.
If you want to know more about SAFe and how to lead SAFe, visit our SAFE Training page for a host of options, from Leading SAFe to a SAFe Release Train Engineer course.
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