The Art of Work

Yet if Csikszentmihalyi feels he can make a difference, he will speak to companies, and currently takes about 10 corporate speaking engagements a year. A few years ago, he gave a talk at Microsoft, which is studying how to use flow to give Windows users a more engaging experience. If the notoriously buggy and user-unfriendly operating system suddenly becomes a pleasure to use, Csikszentmihalyi deserves some thanks. Elsewhere at Microsoft, a researcher is studying how flow might improve the lives and productivity of software engineers.

At Patagonia, CEO Michael Crooke seized upon the ideas in Flow earlier than most. He read the book 10 years ago and credits it with explaining to him exactly why he thrived as a Navy Seal. "When you get a high-powered team together and you really get into a zone, you'll synchronize," he says. Crooke sought Csikszentmihalyi out, and has been meeting with him weekly for the past four years while working toward a PhD in management. Much of his dissertation focuses on creating a workplace environment conducive to flow.

Crooke's research laboratory is his own company. He believes the flow experience can extend from the Patagonia worker to the customer if they both feel good about what the company stands for. Flow, he says, "is at the center of everything I'm doing." In April, Crooke sent out the first iteration of an annual survey intended to gauge how much meaning and job satisfaction employees find in their work. It is chock-full of probing questions like how free employees feel to use their own judgment, whether they feel management is fully open about financial matters, whether Patagonia adequately reports environmental damage it causes, and whether its corporate values and its workers' personal values are aligned.

Crooke is also examining to what extent Patagonia's famed goal of protecting the environment affects his workers' experiences there. This is because Csikszentmihalyi believes that flow is most powerful when achieved in service of a goal that will better society. After learning how much pesticide was required to make a single cotton shirt, Patagonia began using only organic cotton in its clothes. In a few years, Crooke says, Patagonia will make biodegradable clothing that people can compost in the backyard along with their banana peels.

Some people dispute a direct linkage between earth-friendly underwear and an inspirational workplace, but Crooke isn't one of them. "[Flow] manifests itself in focused, on-time, on-spec products," he says, "that win in the marketplace because they were developed in a system in which the customers and the internal people all know what they want and need." In a world of depressed Dilberts, it's certainly worth a try.

Ann Marsh is an author and freelance writer based in Costa Mesa, California.