In August 2013, I came across a video by Dan Pink titled “RSA Animate – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”. During this video I came across 3M’s “15 percent time”, Google’s “20 percent time” and Atlassian’s ShipIt Days. From Dan’s talk, I could instantly connect and relate to the three motivators… Autonomy (Our desire to be self-directed), Mastery (Our urge to get better and better at something that matters) and Purpose (our yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves).

I have been getting a lot of Autonomy in my day to day work and that’s one of the primary reason why, even after completing 13 years at IDeaS, I tremendously love what I do and my energy levels are very high. I would say I was lucky enough… Not every-one gets that! That’s why I was thoroughly impressed with Atlassian’s ShipIt Day concept. It provides employees the Autonomy that they crave for.

I had to convince my fellow colleagues and the executives on the value that ShipIt Day could bring. I was very lucky to get tremendous support from Sanjay Nagalia, Rajiv Nashikkar, Steve Finck, Prafulla Girgaonkar, Prasad Kunte, Linda Hatfield and many others without whom it was not possible to organize ShipIt@IDeaS.

The first ShipIt was held on 10^th and 11^th October 2013. Time flies… It has been one full year and so far we have had 4 ShipIt Days.

Give Autonomy to your employees and see what wonders they can do! You should witness the energy and enthusiasm with which they stay back whole night and pursue their own ideas! Hats off to the participants.

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