A year or so ago I read Dan Pink's book
A Whole New Mind and was really impressed. Pink presented a challenge to look at the world an entirely new way backed up with clear analysis and intrepid arguments. I thoroughly enjoyed A Whole New Mind so when his latest title,
DRiVE, became available I picked it up.
DRiVE is a natural progression from A Whole New Mind. In A Whole New Mind, Pink argued we has a race had progressed through three "ages" and the fourth age, the conceptual age is where we can excel. In DRiVE he makes the case for different strategies for motivating ourselves, our coworkers, our family and our communities (for the purpose of this recap I'll focus on how it applies to a business environment but there's just as much in there for personal growth and families).
He lays the foundation for the book by suggesting humans, like software have gone through two versions: motivation one, where our basic operating system was fuelled by the need to survive. Motivation two introduced us to the idea of seeking out rewards and avoiding punishment and finally - our latest upgrade - motivation three "presumes that humans also have a third drive - to learn, to create and to better the world."
So how does this translate into the real world? Pink uses several examples illustrating the downfalls of motivation two. While motivation two was definitely the version humans used to spur the explore across the oceans, found new countries and spur the industrial revolution it is not able to work with today's motivation three humans.
For example, a day care in Israel had a policy that all children had to be picked up by 5 p.m.. The amount of late parents was minimal but they decided to introduce a new policy, if you were late picking up your child you would be charged a nominal fee which would be added to your monthly bill. Administrators expected the amount of late parents would reduce but in fact it dramatically increased.
When there was no carrot and stick to persuade the parents to come early they were motivated by their good will. But when the day care introduced the late charge, parents felt it was now okay to come late because they were paying for it.
Pink also sited studies where subjects would be divided into two groups, one where they would be paid to perform a function and another where they were not paid. Surprisingly the group that was paid would not outperform the unpaid group.
If you translate this into the workplace it establishes an interesting problem: how do you motivate employees to do their work? Pink says the first thing you have to do is take the issue of money and benefits off the table and you do this simply by ensuring your employees are paid fairly both inside and outside of the company. So people who have similar experience and responsibilities should be paid the same. Those same people should also be paid comparably to positions at employees at similar companies. The key here is you can't use money and benefits to motivate employees, you can only use it to keep them from being demotivated.
There are three elements you can offer employees to keep them motivated:
Autonomy: Pink points to Best Buy's Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) as the best example of offering employees Autonomy. Under this system employees set their own hours and meetings are completely optional. Employees are paid based on results, not attendance
Mastery: I'll put this into my own thoughts. Mastery is the action of offering your employees to become better every day. Whether that attending workshops and training that directly helps them on the job or by making educational benefits available for things like golf lessons or to get your real estate license.
Purpose: Provide employees with the knowledge that what they are doing is greater than just meeting quarterly profits.
DRiVE is divided up into three sections with the final section being a field guide for how you can test the waters with the ideas he presents in the book. What makes this section particularly useful is if you've gotten this far you're probably convinced that what he's saying has some merit and you're motivated to put the axe to the grindstone.
For me, Pink was preaching to the choir with DRiVE. I've had lots of conversations with my close friends about what motivates us and less and less the answer is money. Even status and prestige are taking back seats to personal growth and giving back. DRiVE is the roadmap for any organization that wants to excel in 2010 and beyond and its clear and digestible style makes it an easy playbook to follow.
