Daniel H. Pink explores the truth about what actually motivates a person to do better or worse in their workplace or life in general. He captivates his readers by surprising them with information that most people would not think is true. He explores what drives people to do better in the workplace. Drive is not only a motivational book but it gives you a better aspect of how to better live your life and not waste it. Pink explains three different types of motivation. Motivation 1. 0 involves being motivated by food, security, or sex. Motivation 2. 0 includes being motivated by a reward or punishment.
Motivation 3. 0 involves being motivated by learning, creating, or simply getting better at something. Edward Deci performed an experiment to test individual’s motivation. Deci had two different groups assemble Soma pieces. One group was paid and the other was not (Motivation 2. 0). Deci’s experiment showed that on the second day the group that was being paid showed less interest than the group that was not paid. Then on the third day, he told the group he had paid previously that they would not be getting paid. Deci then noticed that the group was even less interested in the Soma pieces than before.
What can be learned here is that human motivation is intrigued by reward. Someone will become more interested in something if they are getting something out of it but as soon as you take the reward factor away they become less interested. A part of the book that interested me the most is when Pink mentioned one company that will pay professionals to write articles for an encyclopedia and the second encyclopedia will not even come from a company. It will come from random people on the internet who will read and edit articles for free.
Naturally, everyone (including me) would think that the company who ays their employees would succeed better than the second one. However, Wikipedia came to be one of the most popular sites on the internet today. I think there is a lot we can learn from this, just because we pay people to do things does not mean that they will do a better job than if we were letting people do something without paying them. I learned that if I want something done maybe it is not the best idea to offer a reward because if you do not offer that same reward again the job will not be done as well.
Pink really surprises me when he mentions rewards do not make people perform better. An xperiment was done in India to test the power of incentives. Individuals were split up into three groups and asked to play certain games and they were all offered different amounts of rewards (ranging from 4 rupees, 40 rupees, and 400 rupees). Results showed that individuals performed the same if they were told they were going to be award 4 or 40 rupees. The individuals that were told they would be rewarded 400 rupees performed much worse than the other participants.
Incentives can make individuals perform worse because they are distracted by what they could get. I think this is very important ecause I plan on owning my own business sometime in the future. With this in mind, I will know that incentives such as monetary values do not make individuals perform better but worse. Pink even mentions compliments are better than monetary rewards. “Without good management, complex enterprises tend to become more chaotic” (Kotter, 4). With that being said I think a good manager starts with knowing how to make your employees perform better.
I think this will help me in the future because it gives me an idea of what will work and what will not. Jeff Gunther a CEO in Charlottesville allows his mployees to work on their own terms. That means they do not have to show up to work at a certain time, they can essentially come in whenever as long as they get their work done. Gunther launched an experiment that showed that allowing to employees to work on their own terms boosted employee morale and work was completed more efficiently and had better quality.
This type of work environment allows for individuals to be creative and more independent and less reliant on being directed by a boss. I think this is very significant because most companies are looking to boost production and his is a really interesting aspect on how to do that. This can also be applied to my life because I think it is a very interesting concept and now after reading this book I am considering about running my own business with this type of layout. “As leaders, when we meet with such nonmechanical responses, we have had two options.
We could criticize our own leadership skills, or we could blame our followers” (Wheatley, 20). This quote is very important to me because Gunther wanted to boost productivity and sales. “Some people thought I was crazy,” said Gunther (Pink, 85). I think is really admirable of Gunther because of nstead of criticizing himself or his employees he tried something completely new to see how it worked. Everyone thought he was crazy, but he did not care. I think that takes courage and persistence to be able to be criticized by many and not care. Clare Boothe Luce offered advice to John F.
Kennedy “A great man, is a sentence” (Pink 154). I think this can be applied to everyone’s life to make them realize that success does not just come to you in a split second (Motivation 3. 0). It comes with time, a long time. You cannot expect to be “a great man” by doing something overnight. It takes patience and ersistence to become a great man. I think that since success takes more than just a couple days it weeds out the people that really do not want it. Since it is a time commitment it shows who really wants to succeed and be the best they can be.
People who want to succeed will ask themselves “where you better today than yesterday” (Pink 155). Individuals that want to succeed will see the minor small improvements as accomplishments. Whenever I am having a bad day I just have to ask myself; was I better today than yesterday. I think this will help me when things do not always go my way in college (ex. Failing a test). I think asking myself that will help me keep focused and will remind myself that I am still learning how to be the best person I can be.
The power of purpose is a huge motivating factor. Pink mentions how baby boomers look back on their and think what have they done to make a difference and what they will continue to do to do something meaningful. Everyone wants to know that they did something to improve this world. Including the generation after the baby boomers (Generation Y). They value the idea that “they can make a difference in this world” (Pink, 133). This idea is kind of really important to me. Since I want to run my own business I want my employees to have this vision.
If we all are trying to make a difference in this world then we will be unstoppable. That sounds cliche and cheesy but that is ideally what I want for my business. I want to hire motivated people that will share the same vision as myself. After reading this book written by Daniel Pink I think I have a better understanding of how I want to run my business and how to make it successful. He has not only taught me how to manage a business but how to keep employees engaged and interested in sharing the same vision as myself.