Vacation: Part 4

(yes - still skipping Part 2)

I used two of my precious vacation days to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit with Joseph.  I was doubting whether that was a good investment of my days, but WOW it was a great conference.  Enjoyed the time with Joseph.  Received lots of challenges, encouragement & ideas.

One example.... Daniel Pink talked about the concept of a "FedEx Day".  That's where once a quarter, employees are given a whole Thursday to work on anything they want, not related to their normal job.  Then, they have to present what they did to their team on Friday (overnight, thus "FedEx").  Doesn't that sound like an easy way to stimulate creativity in the office?  Pink said, I think, that google has a rule that 20% of an employee's time can be spent working on whatever they want.  With google retaining the license to whatever creative ideas develop, of course.  He said that google news and gmail were both the result of 20% time.  I can't wait to demo a bit of this concept at my work.

Oh - I'll leave you with a question from Pink's presentation.  He asked, "How are people best motivated at work?"  What do you think?