About me: I'm an unrepentant generalist finding my way in a world of specialists. I started this blog to review books, but I now talk about topics ranging from management to cognition to social software.
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I really liked Pink’s TED talk on the “surprising science of motivation” where he says “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does”. In particular, the compensation and motivation strategies currently used by businesses have been shown to undermine motivation rather than enhance it. So I’ve been interested in reading the book-length version of his argument, and managed to snag it from the library soon after release.
Alas, there’s not much more in the book than what’s in the TED video. So go watch that. Or read his “cocktail party summary”:
When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system–which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators–doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
I don’t have much to add beyond that, except to cheer him on. I think that creating new organizational cultures that trust people rather than processes is a goal towards which we should all be aspiring, even if I have no idea how to make that happen.
I also really liked his 2 questions video. The 2 questions:
The weekday posts are going to be less thoughtful, but, hey, I’ve got a year’s backlog of books to review, so I can crank those out during the week, and hopefully I can continue digging into more meaty topics on the weekend.
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[...] Drive, by Daniel Pink [...]
[...] Drive, by Daniel Pink [...]
[...] Dan Pink’s book Drive was good, so I also picked up this book from the library, subtitled “The last career guide you’ll ever need”. It’s written in the style of manga (Japanese comics), and can be read in half an hour, but offers solid advice on career management. [...]
How does Pink reconcile his findings with Taylor’s, that organizations that adopt pay-for-performance strategies are ~40% more productive than organizations that don’t?
(I can come of with a handful of ways to explain it, I’m interested in his explanation instead of mine)
That said, I’d be intrigued to see how the matchbox-and-candle experiment goes with subjects who are affirmatively trained in lateral thinking – it sounds like what’s happening to the incented group is that they’re going more deeply into a focused problem-solving mode. I’m curious what happens if their focused problem-solving process has been actively trained to incorporate more brainstorming.