Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

“When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity,” he wrote.5 Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.

The first were “hygiene” factors—extrinsic rewards such as pay, working conditions, and job security. Their absence created dissatisfaction, but their presence didn’t lead to job satisfaction.

The second were “motivators”—things like enjoyment of the work itself, genuine achievement, and personal growth. These internal desires were what really boosted both satisfaction and performance and were where managers ought to focus their attention.

Routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; nonroutine, more interesting work depends on self-direction.

Motivation 2.0 is similar. At its heart are two elegant and simple ideas: Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. Punishing an activity will get you less of it.

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.

“People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.”4

Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects.

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.

CARROTS AND STICKS: The Seven Deadly Flaws 1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation. 2. They can diminish performance. 3. They can crush creativity. 4. They can crowd out good behavior. 5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. 6. They can become addictive. 7. They can foster short-term thinking.

The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.

The businesses that offered autonomy grew at four times the rate of the control-oriented firms and had one-third the turnover.4

“If you don’t pay enough, you can lose people. But beyond that, money is not a motivator. What matters are these other features.” And what a few future-facing businesses are discovering is that one of these essential features is autonomy—in particular, autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do, when they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with.

Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.

“Hire good people, and leave them alone.”

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery—the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

The best predictor of success, the researchers found, was the prospective cadets’ ratings on a noncognitive, nonphysical trait known as “grit”—defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”

“Whereas the importance of working harder is easily apprehended, the importance of working longer without switching objectives may be less perceptible . . . in every field, grit may be as essential as talent to high accomplishment.”

“Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.”

“Being a professional,” Julius Erving once said, “is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”

The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization.

In business, we tend to obsess over the “how”—as in “Here’s how to do it.” Yet we rarely discuss the “why”—as in “Here’s why we’re doing it.” But it’s often difficult to do something exceptionally well if we don’t know the reasons we’re doing it in the first place. People at work are thirsting for context, yearning to know that what they do contributes to a larger whole. And a powerful way to provide that context is to spend a little less time telling how and a little more time showing why.

If people chase profit goals, reach those goals, and still don’t feel any better about their lives, one response is to increase the size and scope of the goals—to seek more money or greater outside validation. And that can “drive them down a road of further unhappiness thinking it’s the road to happiness,”

“One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attainers is that they’re not having good relationships. They’re busy making money and attending to themselves and that means that there’s less room in their lives for love and attention and caring and empathy and the things that truly count,”

We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

So before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself the small question: Was I a little better today than yesterday?

“What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.”

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition matters. Basketball greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team practice; they shoot five hundred.

Focus ruthlessly on where you need help. While many of us work on what we’re already good at, says Ericsson, “those who get better work on their weaknesses.”

Everybody wants autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The thing is, “we” can get it—but “they” can’t.

What’s the difference between those who are pretty good at what they do and those who are masters? Fortune magazine’s Colvin scours the evidence and shows that the answer is threefold: practice, practice, practice. But it’s not just any practice, he says. The secret is “deliberate practice”—highly repetitive, mentally demanding work that’s often unpleasant, but undeniably effective.

Big Idea: Theory X vs. Theory Y. McGregor described two very different approaches to management, each based on a different assumption about human behavior. The first approach, which he called Theory X, assumed that people avoid effort, work only for money and security, and, therefore, need to be controlled. The second, which he called Theory Y, assumed that work is as natural for human beings as play or rest, that initiative and creativity are widespread, and that if people are committed to a goal, they will actually seek responsibility. Theory Y, he argued, was the more accurate—and ultimately more effective—approach.

Big Idea: Self-management. “Drucker’s primary contribution is not a single idea,” Jim Collins once wrote, “but rather an entire body of work that has one gigantic advantage: nearly all of it is essentially right.” Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker,” foresaw the rise of the nonprofit sector, and was among the first to stress the primacy of the customer in business strategy. But although he’s best known for his thoughts on managing businesses, toward the end of his career Drucker signaled the next frontier: self-management. With the rise of individual longevity and the decline of job security, he argued, individuals have to think hard about where their strengths lie, what they can contribute, and how they can improve their own performance. “The need to manage oneself,” he wrote shortly before he died in 2005, is “creating a revolution in human affairs.”

Big Idea: Continual improvement. Focusing on steadily improving quality is more effective and more efficient than constantly wringing out costs. That requires providing individuals greater autonomy and removing barriers like incentive pay and forced rankings that rob people of the pride of workmanship.

Big Idea: Motivation-hygiene theory. Herzberg’s research found that what he called “hygiene factors”—such as salary, security, and status—were crucial for avoiding job dissatisfaction, but had little impact on job satisfaction. Satisfaction depended on “growth or motivator factors”—things like interesting work, greater responsibility, and the opportunity to grow. Organizations that tried to boost performance by using hygiene factors—say, by offering bonuses or holding out the prospect of a promotion—were playing a game they couldn’t win. The better approach, he argued, was to focus on job enrichment and make the work itself more challenging and meaningful.

Self-motivation and greatness. “Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time,” Collins wrote in Good to Great. “If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?”

Big Idea: The results-only work environment. ROWE, described in Chapter 4, affords employees complete autonomy over when, where, and how they do their work. The only thing that matters is results.