Autonomy, mastery, and purpose — these are things that people really want in a job according to bestselling author and creativity expert Daniel Pink. He makes a strong case in the video below (he was a lawyer) for rethinking how businesses are run. He talks about robust scientific findings, which are showing us that traditional ways of motivating people in business, through incentives and rewards, doesn’t work. Not only do they not work, he says, but they can dull our thinking and block creativity.
Although these scientific findings prove that extrinsic motivators, in general, don’t work, Pink says, the business community is ignoring them. “There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does,” he says. Pink explains that if we want to get out of this economic mess and get high performance from our employees, the solution is not to do more of the wrong thing, which is to entice them with a sweeter carrot or threaten them with a larger stick. He talks about the need for a new approach that centers around intrinsic motivators, where, he believes, the new operating system for our businesses should be based in three elements: autonomy (the urge to direct our own lives), mastery (the desire to get better and better at something that matters) and purpose (the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves).
In addition to this video below, Pink wrote an excellent article for Oprah.com titled How to Tap into What Really Motivates You.
For more information on Daniel Pink, visit www.danpink.com.
