Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

Too many organizations—not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well—still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. They continue to pursue practices such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes in the face of mounting evidence that such measures usually don’t work and often do harm.

Kahneman and others in the field of behavioral economics agreed with my professor that economics was the study of human economic behavior. They just believed that we’d placed too much emphasis on the economic and not enough on the human. That hyperrational calculator-brained person wasn’t real. He was a convenient fiction.

Behavioral scientists like Deci began discovering the Sawyer Effect nearly forty years ago, although they didn’t use that term. Instead, they referred to the counterintuitive consequences of extrinsic incentives as “the hidden costs of rewards.”

“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.

And—let me emphasize this point—goals and extrinsic rewards aren’t inherently corrupting. But goals are more toxic than Motivation 2.0 recognizes. In fact, the business school professors suggest they should come with their own warning label: “Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.”

But companies pay a steep price for not extending their gaze beyond the next quarter. Several researchers have found that companies that spend the most time offering guidance on quarterly earnings deliver significantly lower long-term growth rates than companies that offer guidance less frequently. (One reason: The earnings-obsessed companies typically invest less in research and development.)23 They successfully achieve their short-term goals, but threaten the health of the company two or three years hence.

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.

“self-determination theory (SDT).”

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.

once compensation meets that level, money plays a different role for Type I’s than for Type X’s. Type I’s don’t turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. But one reason fair and adequate pay is so essential is that it takes people’s focus off money, which allows them to concentrate on the work itself. By contrast, for many Type X’s, money is the table. It’s why they do what they do. Recognition is similar. Type I’s like being recognized for their accomplishments—because recognition is a form of feedback. But for them, unlike for Type X’s, recognition is not a goal in itself.

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.

ROWE—a results-only work environment.

Perhaps it’s time to toss the very word “management” onto the linguistic ash heap alongside “icebox” and “horseless carriage.” This era doesn’t call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.

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.”

“We should focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked.”

“No matter what kind of business you’re in, it’s time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks, and outdated industrial-age thinking.”

The highest, most satisfying experiences in people’s lives were when they were in flow.

First, they provide employees with what I call “Goldilocks tasks”—challenges that are not too hot and not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly simple. One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. (Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi titled his first book on autotelic experiences Beyond Boredom and Anxiety.) But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.

Motivation 2.0 centered on profit maximization. Motivation 3.0 doesn’t reject profits, but it places equal emphasis on purpose maximization. We see the first stirrings of this new purpose motive in three realms of organizational life—goals, words, and policies.

“My hope is that at our 25th reunion our class will not be known for how much money we made or how much money we gave back to the school, but for how the world was a better place as a result of our leadership.”

That’s the thinking behind the simple and effective way Robert B. Reich, former U.S. labor secretary, gauges the health of an organization. He calls it the “pronoun test.” When he visits a workplace, he’ll ask the people employed there some questions about the company. He listens to the substance of their response, of course. But most of all, he listens for the pronouns they use. Do the workers refer to the company as “they”? Or do they describe it in terms of “we”? “They” companies and “we” companies, he says, are very different places.

“The value of a life can be measured by one’s ability to affect the destiny of one less advantaged. Since death is an absolute certainty for everyone, the important variable is the quality of life one leads between the times of birth and death.” BILL STRICKLAND Founder of the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, and MacArthur “genius award” winner

in the major economies of the world, people’s lives typically consist of three broad stages: education, work, retirement. But in the U.S. and elsewhere, some boomers are now carving out a fourth category—what the think tank Civic Ventures calls “encore careers.” Instead of retiring or continuing to work as they always have, they’re crafting jobs that offer a continued income, but that emphasize meaning, significance, and contributing to the world.

his insightful book Rules of Thumb, Fast Company magazine cofounder Alan Webber

Because these bonuses are noncontingent “now that” rewards, they avoid the seven deadly flaws of most corporate carrots. And because they come from a colleague, not a boss, they carry a different (and perhaps deeper) meaning. As Kimley-Horn’s Julie Beauvais puts it, giving employees a way to acknowledge a coworker “puts the feedback control in the hands of the folks who are closest to the activity.”

In his book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, New York University professor Clay Shirky argues that when we design systems that assume bad faith from the participants, and whose main purpose is to guard against nasty behavior, we often foster the very behavior we’re trying to deter.

Higher wages could actually reduce a company’s costs.

the gain for reaching the metrics shouldn’t be too large. When the payoff for reaching targets is modest, rather than massive, it’s less likely to narrow people’s focus or encourage them to take the low road. To be sure, finding the right mix of metrics is difficult and will vary considerably across organizations. And some people will inevitably find a way to game even the most carefully calibrated system. But using a variety of measures that reflect the totality of great work can transform often counterproductive “if-then” rewards into less combustible “now that” rewards.