If you haven’t read Drive by Daniel Pink, you should, now.  Buy it here or read a short overview of each chapter here.  Daniel has identified three components that Drive us:

1. Autonomy - The desire to be self-directed
2. Mastery - Our urge to get better at stuff
3. Purpose - The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

This led me to ponder…what motivates me?  Why do I love what I do?  I thought about how I’m driven.

1. Autonomy – I’m given task/projects and given the FREEDOM to figure them out and present them back in the most effective way.  I get to focus, concentrate and above all produce work on my terms.  I’m allowed to figure things out on my own, to solve puzzle in the way I see fit.  Best of all, I get to FAIL so that I learn.
2. Mastery – I want to be an expert at what I do.  This requires practice and opportunity, both of which I get from my boss. I get to play with data and with Tableau for hours on end each and every day. I’m driven by words from my boss like “Try out that new tool for this analysis.  I know you can make it sing like no one else has.”  In the end, I want to LEARN everyday.
3. Purpose – I want to make a difference at Coke that no one has ever made before and I’m on that path.  I’ve been told that the promotion optimization work that I’ve been doing is groundbreaking at Coke worldwide.  I’m not motivated by pay or incentives. I’m motivated by the SMILES I see and the eyes that open from the teams I support and the customers I serve.

Here’s a great video that’ll make you want to go out and take on the world.  This book truly is a game changer.

Please take a second to click this link to give me a quick show of support: http://bit.ly/lo58QV

The Tableau Interactive “Viz” contest closed Friday.  The winner chosen will take away a free roundtrip ticket to attend the 2011 Tableau Customer Conference. This includes 3 night’s accommodations at the Encore and a chance to compete in the Iron Viz championship with the winners of two other contests. The winner of Iron Viz will take away a new iPad2, and $2,000.

My time was limited to work on the contest (I’m busy blowing people away with Tableau in my real job) so I updated a viz I created back in December.  The key difference now is that Diet Coke has overtaken Pepsi as the #2 preferred soft drink brand in the world.  You read that right, Coke & Diet Coke are now #1 and #2.  I think we know who’s winning the cola wars now!

The viz below is a cleaned up, simplified version of my December viz.  The purpose is simple, how is Coke performing compared to Pepsi.  Compare historical price trends and shares traded over time.  Using the “Choose a time frame” selector, you can view the data by Year, Quarter, Month or Day…you pick the level of detail you want to see. You can also drill down to specific years (the data starts in 1977 since that’s when Pepsi went public).

Vote here (and vote for Coke!): http://bit.ly/f24E61