We featured this TED Talk from Daniel Pink last September, but wanted to show it again. 

Our staff is currently reading Dan’s new book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” and are absolutely loving it!!!  If you don’t get a chance to read it, at least watch this video – we are sure you will learn some interesting facts about human motivation in the workplace.

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers do not – Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

Dan has studied the science of human motivation, specifically the dynamics of external and internal motivators.

There is a mismatch to what science has proven and what business does. Rewards can narrow the focus of people’s thinking and restricts their creative possibilities.

In today’s global market place, left brain activities, such as accounting, computer programming can be easily outsourced and automated. Therefore, there is a premium for workers that think with their right brains – out of the box conceptual abilities.

At a study conducted at MIT found that when tasks where mechanical, bonuses worked as expected; the higher the pay, the better the performance. However, when the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward lead to a poorer performance.

Science also gives a solution for how to motivate people and it is rooted in intrinsic motivation and revolves around 3 key building blocks:

* Autonomy – The urge to direct our own lives
* Mastery – The desire to get better and better at something that matters
* Purpose – To be of service to something larger than ourselves

Management concepts work wonderful if you want compliance. But if you want engagement, self-direction is the way to “manage” people.

Examples of companies that have used these concepts are discussed, including google and the wikipedia model.

Be Free!