This year one of our top CEO book selections was Daniel Pink's new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - an inspirational treatise on how to keep moving forward positively in life and business.
Pink makes the case, via a persuasive summary of applicable research, that what propels people forward (gets them to act in any way) has changed dramatically in the last century, and profoundly from what motivated early mankind. If we start at the beginning, what drove humans to do anything had to basically revolve around survival; biological drives ruled human lives, from scrounging for food to procreation.
As human communities progressed, people also needed to work together in increasingly cooperative fashions to achieve more complex goals - like building physical infrastructures, conducting commerce, and organizing for warfare. This led to what Pink calls "Motivation 2.0" where people were primarily focused on gaining rewards and avoiding punishments, to meet societal expectations. But while this psychological approach worked for a long time, it started to break down during the last century when so many underpinnings started transforming - causing routine work to be increasingly displaced by creative and intellectual contributions.
New research conducted over the last 50 years convincingly argues that intrinsic motivation now may have the most power over human behavior. In fact most extrinsic motivation (such as rewards for performance) may actually have the opposite effect on desired behavior because it limits/narrows, as opposed to opens/broadens, the focus of one's actions. If the task/work problem is challenging, and hard to solve, then you want people to feel empowered to truly look outside the box not just within its parameters.
Ultimately, to respond to our new world order and develop the skills for true personal and societal success, Pinks makes the case that we must embrace three new motivating essentials:
1. Autonomy: The freedom-ability to direct one's own life, and work
2. Mastery: The desire and commitment to get better and better at something that really matters to the individual
3. Purpose: The desire to do work that serves a larger, and meaningful purpose beyond ourselves as individuals
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Daniel Pink is mind-blowingly brilliant. If you want to catch him next, he'll be sharing the stage with the New York Times' Daniel Pogue and Creativity guru Sir Ken Robinson at the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City on Nov. 15-17. Check it out at www.stateofcreativity.com
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