I’ve been reading Peter Diamandis’ book Bold and am really enjoying it. Peter has a great ability to distill complex ideas down to simple thoughts. He’s also quite impressive himself — doing impressive work in space exploration, technology and longevity research and also creating the famous X prize.
Certainly a fan of dreaming big, he cites interesting research that may help you think about achieving your own “moonshots” or maybe more realistically, figuring out how to find a company that will help you unlock a greater level of productivity and passion:
Locke’s thinking relies on three elements — when all three elements are in place, great things can happen.
The first element is attainability — individuals need to believe they can actually achieve the goal.
The second element is self-efficacy or belief in the strength of ones own skills.
The third element is the key one — goal-committment. The greater the alignment between your personal values and the outcomes of the goal, the greater your own motivation and likelyhood of achieving that goal.
When applying this third concept to organizaitons, you can see why so many people are frustrated. Few organizations have a very clear purpose to start with. The ones that do may not align with the personal values of the individuals.
So if you are frustrated at work — are you sure your personal values are aligned with the mission of the organization?
