Drive by Daniel Pink

1. The old workplace environment was built on extrinsic motivators, carrot-and-stick analogy. Work is changing & businesses should focus on instrinsic motivation.
2. Creation of intrinsic motivation requires autonomy, mastery, and purpose:
3. Autonomy over their time & how work is done, encouraged to pursue mastery over something important, connected to a purpose that's bigger than themselves.

Shortcomings & unexpected side effects of extrinsic rewards

• Can crowd out intrinsic motivation
• Diminishes long term performance
• Can crush creativity
• Can crowd out good behavior
• Can encourage cheating
• Can become addictive
• Can foster short term thinking

Self determination theory

• Autonomy (Autonomy) - desire to direct our own lives
• Mastery (Competence) - get better at something that matters
• Purpose (Relatedness) - yearning for our work to be a part of something bigger
• Author seems to be deviating from relatedness/connection in research literature, which seems to be more about belonging and connection to other humans

Other topics covered

• Flow
• Growth vs. fixed mindset
• Grit

• Sawyer Effect
• From Mark Twain, any work can become play, any play can become work (getting boys to paint fence for him)
• Work consists of whatever a body is to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
• obliged

• Consider paying people to leave - it’s cheaper in the long run - Amazon, Zappos
• To encourage autonomy: ask for the results, leave the how to them

Mastery

• Flow is a key component to reaching mastery. To achieve flow, need the Goldilocks zone.
• Mastery is a mindset - you see your abilities as infinitely improvable (growth mindset)
• Mastery is pain, demanding effort, grit, and deliberate practice
• Mastery is an asymptote - a mountain without a peak

Purpose

• A sense of purpose is achieved if we:
• Do something that matters
• Do it well
• Do it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves
• He who has a WHY can bear any HOW - Frankl, Nietzsche
• A soldier fights hard for a ribbon - Napoleon

If/then (extrinsic) rewards require people to forfeit autonomy and therefore lower intrinsic motivation to do something

• Offering to pay blood donors reduced the amount of donors by half
• Microsoft Encarta vs Wikipedia
• Giving kids a reward for drawing caused them to draw less
• Extrinsic rewards can be useful when the task is algorithmic.
• Pay should meet basic needs. Beyond that, it is a poor motivator for performance. Better to provide rewards then/that style which are praise, feedback and useful information - not financial.

Research shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose.

The new approach to motivation 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; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

TO MOTIVATE PEOPLE:

• Ask for the results, leave the how to them
• Desired results, by when, why it’s important
• Make them feel like they’re contributing to something important, great
• Provide praise, feedback and useful info when managing
• Don’t offer financial rewards, offer rewards that encourage intrinsic motivation (feedback, useful info, praise)

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