Tool

Intrinsic Motivation & Job Design Canvas

A one-page interactive canvas for redesigning roles to increase autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Includes targeted prompts, example filled canvas, manager-employee co-design conversation guide, spaces to record impact metrics, and up to three quick experiments you can save and iterate on.

Interactive Tool

Intrinsic Motivation & Job Design Canvas

Welcome

This interactive canvas helps managers and role-holders co-design a role that leans into intrinsic motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—while tracking simple impact measures and running small tests. Fill the fields together, save the canvas, and run the experiments you capture. Below you'll find a short example and conversation prompts to help the co-design conversation stay practical and focused.

Quick Example (sample answers)

Role: Customer Support Specialist
Core purpose: Help customers solve problems quickly so they can use our product with confidence.
Autonomy levers: control of case routing, authority to close minor refunds, flexible schedule to handle spikes.
Skill growth plan: 4-week training in troubleshooting + fortnightly coaching; shadowing senior reps for 3 months.
Impact metrics: first-contact resolution rate, customer NPS, average handle time, agent retention.
Customer connection: monthly customer call-in reviews and reading verbatim feedback.
Experiment: Give the rep authority to approve refunds up to $50 for 30 days; measure CSAT and refund frequency.

Co-Design Conversation Prompts

  • What outcome would make this role feel meaningful at the end of 6 months?
  • Which decisions in the day-to-day job could be moved from approval to owned by the role?
  • What skills matter most for success and how quickly can we provide meaningful practice?
  • Which metrics will show that the role redesign is helping customers and the business?
  • What small, time-boxed experiment can we run to test one change before scaling it?

Save the canvas when you're done. Use the experiments section to capture hypotheses, measurement, and duration so you can iterate fast.

Short, specific role title (e.g., 'Customer Support Specialist').
Describe in one or two sentences the essential outcome this role is responsible for.
Choose levers that increase day-to-day decision-making power for the role.
Describe any additional autonomy lever not listed above.
How important is increasing autonomy for this role right now? (1 = low priority, 5 = high priority)
1.0 10.0
List practical steps, timelines, and supports (training, coaching, shadowing, practice tasks) to develop needed skills.
Rate how confident you are that the plan can be delivered (1 = low, 5 = high).
1.0 10.0
Choose a small set of measurable outcomes that will show whether the redesign is working.
Name any additional metric you plan to track.
Describe how the role’s work links to customer outcomes or stakeholder value. Consider concrete touchpoints and feedback loops.
Short name for the quick test (e.g., 'Refund Authority Pilot').
Brief hypothesis in 'If we..., then...' form.
Which of the chosen impact metrics will you use and how will you measure them during the experiment?
How long will the experiment run? Choose a short, time-boxed period (e.g., 14, 30).
Record any limits, approvals required, checkpoints, and who will review results.
Enter meeting date (YYYY-MM-DD) when you discussed and saved this canvas.
Quick assessment: is this change ready to pilot?
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