Kept on Wikipedia:20% Project

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What Intrinsically Motivates Workers, and what makes the 20% Project Successful

20% Project

Introduction

The 20% Project is a tech and innovation solution used to drive human creativity, and inspiration, in the hope to create new solutions and improvements in the world. In this framework, people spend 20% of their total working time on a passion project or a pet project, doing something they would have done if they weren’t working. This means that there are few incentives, other than self-motivation driving this project. The hope is that through such self-motivation, people will come up with unique solutions to problems they face in the workforce. The idea is that intrinsic motivation allows people to learn faster and better than any extrinsic motivation. This project is also called 20time, or Innovation Time Off (ITO). This is important because this is a concept that can be applied to other fields, and is a good example of a policy that increases public good in that it has many positive externalities, some internalised by the organisation and some external.

History

-       3M started such passion projects in the 1950’s with their 15% project.  The result was what we now know as post-its and masking tape.

-       Google makes what we know today as the 20% Project. They pay their employees, to spend 20% of their total time at work to work on a pet project, or something they enjoy. They give them the resources and the incentives and other people to do this, and as a result Google has been able to create Gmail, AdSense, and Google News.

-       The 20% Project takes place without the involvement of any committees, bureaucracy, or budgets. For engineers at big companies, the process of a passion project is validated by fellow engineers because many big companies that apply this have a bottom up approach. 

The Future

Applying it to classrooms : Educators hope that applying this to classrooms will foster creativity, innovation and motivation within students to study and learn rather than just read and “word vomit.” Students are fortified to seek their own topics of interest, create their own timeline for completion, research their own ideas, create products or solutions, and eventually complete them. The shortcoming of this idea is that students don’t always see a list of possible ideas and then limit their ideas to that list if they are provided with one. This can also be seen as an inherent shortcoming of our current education system though. This way of learning has also sometimes been called Genius Hour or the 20time project, both of which prove that this 80/20 use of time is successful.

Why it works

Based on organisational psychology principles, the things that motivate employees to be more productive and creative is if they feel autonomous, like they have a purpose, and are internally motivated. The 20% project, in theory provides them with all these three. The time they spend on their personal project wakes them up each day, makes them interact with fellow employees in a productive fashion, and also makes them feel like they are driving change. Many big companies struggle with employees feeling like ‘a-cog-in-a-wheel’ and this project will give them the feeling that the place would not be the same without them. The project also gives them an urgency, something to get done or push ahead which makes them work harder on their remaining 80% of the work.   

The 20% Project increases Purpose, Autonomy, Adaptability (PAA). Autonomy is increased because the employee feels like their personal passions have an outlet, purpose is created so the employee feels like they are contributing to something of their own and gives them a sense of “ownership” over a project which incentivises them to come to work and be more productive so they can spend more time on their project. Adaptability is increased because the employees learns new skills, and learns different stages of a process, learns to get feedback and do things that are not laid out with clear instructions. This increases critical thinking ability, and gives them a variety of skills they couldn’t have learned on their regular job that usually has a singular role.

The visual on this page is inspired by Dan Pink’s book called Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates us, where he attributes Autonomy, Purpose, and Mastery, as reasons for a person’s ambition. He also argues that long-lasting motivation is usually intrinsic, which is why the 20% project may be successful and in line with his findings. The project may lead to mastery, but because of its ‘self-starter’ nature, it also forces one to be adaptable.

Criticism

The 20% Project is only an idea, and not one that can be implemented because people who work at google, or those who are smart and talented enough to turn their 20% Project into a reality, would not be working a 9-to-5 job or be stuck in a classroom. Although the 20% Project at Google was made public in 2004, when the company went public, in their IPO letter by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the new management does not implement it effectively. Recently, Google began to require that employees must ask for approval from upper management to take 20% time of their regular work, in order to work on an independent project. Marisa Mayer, who used to be a google employee and is not CEO of Yahoo also reveals that the project is not implementable because “It's really 120% time,” it's "stuff that you've got to do beyond your regular job."

Cost-Benefit Analysis The costs of applying this may be considered high because a company needs to pay employees to do something they might have done without being employed, and the company also takes the risk that the employee may leave if they find something they really enjoy doing. But at larger companies, economies of scale and already wasted time by most employees because of organisational inefficiencies is being put to use through the 20% Project. The spillover effect inside the company is obvious – the company is able to internalise benefits, motivate employees by giving them a feeling of autonomy and purpose, and teaching them several skills. The employee is now having personal growth and satisfaction which makes them more productive and more intelligent. The spillover effect outside the company is what makes this project difficult to quantify in this analysis. It may be estimated that the company is creating a larger public good by increasing public knowledge. The company is also increasing competition in the industry, by increasing the number of employees who want to work at their company – many young people want to work at Google with the 20% project being one of their reasons.

20% project applied

If the 20% project is implemented at all companies or in the education system, such as through independent studies and mentorship for personal projects, there will be an increase in public information and public ideation and personal satisfaction. People themselves are happier exploring ideas and problems that affect them, they are also best equipped with the “user experience” and so are able to come up with solutions that are effective. When people feel like they have the chance to work on things they care about, they are more satisfied and more informed. As a result, people are more capable of having better conversations, there is an increase in this intellectual stimulation of the public, and public good increases through "ideas" and "knowledge sharing." This also has a huge positive spill over cost, similar to the positive externalities of Research and development, which will allow growth of the global community.

The problem with this 20% project is that there is little data or evidence collected that proves its value. It would be important to study how employee trajectories or productivity changes when they are allowed to spend more time on their personal projects. It would be important to find if a company, or even a nation, grows with its employees or people doing what they enjoy. Maybe, in the future, the government could incentivise people to invest their time wisely by helping companies pay for personal projects or reducing tax for personal projects or ideas. There are few ways to make ideas tangible; innovation cannot be quantified so this might be difficult.

    

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