Motivation and Daniel H. Pink

Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. Riverhead Books, 2009 In Drive, Pink compellingly challenges the old assumptions about how to “motivate” people and repair the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Humans have evolved and so has their motivational factors. Societies, like computers have operating systems and needs constant upgrades. In primitive stages, survival and biological needs motivated us (Motivation version 1.0). As society became more complex-our survival was no more a threat: we found solace in tangible and materialistic things (Motivation version 2.0). This gave way to Carrot and stick method to reward and punish the employees. This theory is wrong and outdated, ample of references to various psychological and academic research prove this. We are now ready for a motivational upgrade-says Pink. We are not horses-carrots cannot tempt us, stick doesn't scare us. Something bigger than carrot has to motivate us. When sheer joy drives us to do the work-we have upgraded our operating system (Motivation version 3.0). The book focuses on two types of motivations: Intrinsic and Extrinsic. The author argues that extrinsic motivation dampens the long-term goal, hampers performance, and increases errors. Psychologist Sam Gluckenberg in 1960's conducted a ‘Candle experiment’ -participants got: a candle, bunch of matches, box of tacks. They had to fix the candle to a wall. Solution was to empty the tacks box use the box as a platform for the candle and nail the holder to the wall. Gluckenberg observed that reward-free participants finished faster than the paid participants. He concluded, focusing on the reward distracted and interfered with the participants’ ability to perform the task. There are 3 influence factors of intrinsic motivation (Motivation Version 3.0): Autonomy (ownership for our actions), Mastery (steadily work towards what we enjoy doing), and Purpose (being part of something bigger than