If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
-commonly attributed to Antoine de Saint Exupéry
I saw this most recently in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s testimony to Congress. I think it applies very broadly.
People aren’t machines, and actually react very poorly to detailed mindless instructions. But give them a goal, a vision, something they believe in and think they can do, and you’ll find that you only need to do minor direction to accomplish those goals.
It's always more complicated 
The hard thing to realize sometimes is that you are part of that machine and are being treated as such. You’re often (or me I guess) given a task to do, and you just mindlessly do it till you have no passion for it. But by that time, it’s all too late to realize you could have been pointing towards a goal you’re actually interested in.
It’s important to find a balance between what you need to do vs what you strive to do. Both are needed, but a company will only always want you to do one of the two :).
LikeLike