From Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time [Jeff Sutherland, Crown Business, New York 2014  ISBN:978-0-385-34646-7]

“What are the things that actually make people happy?  They’re the same things that make great teams: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Or to say it more expansively, it’s the ability to control your own destiny, it’s the feeling that you’re getting better at something, and it’s knowing that you’re serving something bigger than yourself.”

This leads to a pretty short list of things that can define an individual’s happiness on a team at work:

1.  Do you control the outcome of the work?

2.  Are you getting better at the work over time?  Are you learning new skills, or better mastering existing ones?

3.  Is the world a better place because the work is done?  Does the work contribute to something beyond simply making money?

This last point dovetails into another quote I read somewhere, which I don’t entirely remember.  In short, the idea is that businesses exist to make money while people want to do good works.  Businesses which make money while their employees do good works should become powerful and exciting places to work, even Excellent a la Tom Peter’s work in the 1990’s (In Search of Excellence).