Motivation-Daniel Pink

Daniel pink discusses about motivation. Speaker discusses three drives that keep humans to
motivated, they are, biological, reward/punishment and mastery. It is emphasised that third drive is
the most neglected and has resulted in killing creativity. Behavioural scientists have known for a very
long time, and laboratory experiments done by psychologists, sociologists, handful of biologists a lot
of economists to figure out really what motivates human beings.
In early 1970s Sandford research proves that conditional motivators i.e second drive(rewards) work
well for simple tasks in short term and are highly inappropriate for creative jobs in long term.
Mastery, autonomy & purpose are the main motivators for creative profiles. Autonomy means desire
to direct your life. Rewards in rudimentary jobs distracts focus from creativity to rewards.
Natural state of human beings is to be autonomous and self-directed. People have become more
passive and inert.
Companies doing amazing things-
Companies like Atlasian, zappos, 3M, & gmail are few companies which promote employee creativity
and have resulted in improved performance, better solutions, quick fixes and upgrades to products.
Some examples of solutions are-

 Fedex days Atlasian

 No scripts, no monitoring, no timing  Zappos
 20% time  3M & Gmail
20% can be difficult to afford for some companies, hence 10% can be tested for few months. It is also
argued, best way of performance reviews is “Do It Yourself (DIT) performance reviews” as reviews
at corporates are scripted and boring.
Conclusion- Mastery, most important drive.
Biggest motivator for employees in 21st century is making progress, getting better & doing something
purposeful, it leads to better working environment as well. Incentives are rarely mentioned as
motivating drives.