Full disclosure upfront. Dan Pink is a Never Stop Marketing client.
Ok, now that that is out of the way, I can tell you that I LOVED Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
What Dan did in A Whole New Mind (a previous book) was explain the skills that would be needed to thrive and prosper in a post-industrial age.
He builds on that in Drive by taking the science of motivation (you know the ol’ ‘Carrot and Stick’) and totally flipping it on its head given the fact that the nature of work is changing so dramatically.
The FACT is (and his narrative ties together a ton of substantive research to back this up) that when we are faced with a task that requires creative and the proverbial “out of the box” thinking, we are going perform less remarkably and inefficiently when there is a specific reward laid out in front of us.
Instead, he introduces us to the underlying principles of Motivation 3.0, as he calls it (1.0 is the basic survival motivation, 2.0 is the carrot and stick that is the hallmark of most of management science and was appropriate for an era that is leaving us.)
Motivation 3.0 assumes that our base level of needs are addressed (i.e. you need a fair wage), but that once you get to that point, what brings out breakthrough performance and results are three key components that emanate from a person’s Intrinsic Motivation.
- Autonomy-do we have the control to make our own decisions?
- Mastery-do we possess the desire to continually improve in our chosen area?
- Purpose-does it all make sense to us a in cosmic sense? Do we believe that what we are doing makes sense and has meaning?
If you are asking yourself how you motivate your employees, your students, your community (and this is critical for the practice of Community Driven Marketing, btw) or your partners, you need to take Dan’s work into account.
There’s a huge disconnect between how we think we should motivate others and how we all area actually motivated.
Drive helps you understand what that is and, equally importantly, tells you what you can do about it.
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