Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

Let’s put this insight about rewards and routines into practice. Suppose you’re a manager at a small nonprofit organization. Your design team created a terrific poster promoting your group’s next big event. And now you need to send the poster to twenty thousand members of your organization. Since the costs of outsourcing the job to a professional mailing firm are too steep for your budget, you decide to do the work in-house. Trouble is, the posters came back from the printer much later than you expected and they need to get in the mail this weekend. What’s the best way to enlist your staff of ten, and maybe a few others, in a massive weekend poster mailing session? The task is the very definition of routine: The people participating must roll up the posters, slide them into the mailing tubes, cap those tubes, and apply a mailing label and the proper postage. Four steps—none of them notably interesting. One managerial option is coercion. If you’re the boss, you could force people to spend their Saturday and Sunday on this mind-numbing project. They might comply, but the damage to their morale and long-term commitment could be substantial. Another option is to ask for volunteers. But face it: Most people can think of far better ways to spend a weekend. So in this case, an “if-then” reward might be effective. For instance, you could promise a big office-wide party if everybody pitches in on the project. You could offer a gift certificate to everyone who participates. Or you c...