Drive by Daniel Pink

I first encountered Daniel Pink when seeing his TED talk Video Podcast last year. After a slightly flat beginning compared to other speakers, his presentation picked up momentum and his argument struck home – we need to renovate how we motivate.

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Mr. Pink does an admirable job of making his case that individuals, parents, managers, businesses, schools and society at large need to move from Extrinsic motivation, aka Carrot and Stick, to Intrinsic motivation, aka Flow. Mr Pink writes:

“THIS IS A BOOK about motivation. I will show that much of what we believe about the subject just isn’t so … The problem is that most businesses haven’t caught up to this new understanding of what motivates us. Too many organizations—not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well—still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. They continue to pursue practices such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes in the face of mounting evidence that such measures usually don’t work and often do harm.”

Mr. Pink begins with a brief history of human motivation writing:

“In our very early days—I mean very early days, say, fifty thousand years ago—the underlying assumption about human behavior was simple and true. We were trying to survive … Call this early operating system Motivation 1.0 … As humans formed more complex societies, bumping up against strangers and needing to cooperate in order to get things done, an operating system based purely on the biological drive was inadequate … We also had a second drive—to seek reward and avoid punishment more broadly … call it Motivation 2.0.”

Motivation 2.0 worked wonders. By rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior, man literally built modern society. Further, Motivation 2.0 is “simple to monitor, and straightforward to enforce.” Mr. Pink, however, weaves together behavioral studies which question the reigning “if-then” motivational paradigm. Mr. Pink recounts studies which show the performance of the task itself offering the reward – hence providing INtrinsic motivation accompanied by the holy grail mental state of “FLOW”. Further, Mr Pink examines studies which have shown that extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick), actually stifle the FLOW that accompanies intrinsic motivation. Whereas carrot and stick incentives can produce results by focusing activity (aka left brain), that same focus stifles creativity (right brain). Indeed, Mr Pink outlines seven deadly flaws of carrot and stick motivators:

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.

Instead, Mr. Pink advocates the fostering of three motivators (autonomy, mastery and purpose) which encourage what he calls “Type I” behavior (I as in Intrinsic). Type I behavior is based on “self determination theory” which, Mr. Pink writes, “begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence [mastery], autonomy, and relatedness [purpose]. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy. When they’re thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.”

My Pink’s formula for allowing Type I behavior hinges first on Autonomy. The four essentials for autonomy, Mr. Pink writes, “emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.” Unlike motivation 2.0 which leads to increasing compliance, autonomy leads to increasing engagement. This distinction, writes Mr. Pink, “leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters.” Finally, as Mr. Pink writes, “Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in the service of some greater objective can achieve even more.”

Mr. Pink ends the book with a really interesting Type I toolkit containing motivational gems for leaders, managers, parents, teachers and even sales people. I will leave it to the reader to explore this motivational treasure trove as a valuable yardstick to measure how they are motivated and how they motivate.

While not targeted at sales directly, Mr. Pink’s broad exploration of extrinsic motivation weaknesses certainly apply to sales: ‘IF you make the sale, THEN you get paid the commission’ is clearly still the paradigm for most. Mr. Pink’s examples mostly involve smaller, entrepreneurial companies which would seem to be more naturally intrinsically motivating. When he does reference larger companies like Google and 3M, he is speaking of engineering and product group Type I adoption examples. Hence it is not exactly clear how Type I would work as applied to sales. However, it is alluring to think that you could find the right level of compensation to unleash the creative energy of a sales force. As Mr. Pink writes, “Type I’s don’t turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. But one reason fair and adequate pay is so essential is that it takes the issue of money off the table so they can focus on the work itself. By contrast, for many Type X’s, money is the table.” Regardless, Mr. Pink’s Type I theory proposed in his book Drive offers a very compelling yardstick for anyone seeking to motivate themselves or others. Do you pursue/foster Autonomy, pursue/foster Mastery and possess/instill Purpose?

For more on Daniel Pink visit http://www.danpink.com/.

Copyright King Mediary, Inc. 2010