First half of Drive
I’ve been reading Drive, by Daniel Pink over the last few days. I’m just past half way through the book.
I first heard of Daniel Pink a few weeks ago when I heard him mentioned on NPR, they said they’d have a talk with him for an hour about motivation in the workplace. The way they pitched it was interesting enough for me to actually connect at work (something I’ve never done) and listen to the talk. They talked about how the management of companies is 40-50 years behind behavioral science research. Motivating people with money apparently isn’t working terribly well anymore. The examples he cited were the classics: Google with 20% time, Atlassian with Fedex Days, Zappos with their weird call center rules. I asked IDFusion to buy the book, cause I was curious about what more he could say.
The basic premise of the book is that if you want employees to be happy and productive, you need to do more than offer a carrot (usually money) in front of them. This usually works just fine when the task requires a set number of known steps. They’ll just do them faster to get more money. But if the task requires thinking, then offering money as a carrot (or any “if you succeed, then you get this reward”) will lead to problems.
There are great examples (mainly the ones I listed above) of companies giving their employees more flexibility and autonomy and it working out awesomely. I was really curious to see what he could say about all of this except for listing those types of examples.
Turns out… a fair bit, and with enough evidence that I think he makes a pretty damn solid case. One of his examples that really struck me was one about blood donations. It’s pretty universal that blood donors don’t get paid. Mostly due to the fact that it’s seen as unethical to pay for human organs, and blood is close enough that we (society) have decided it should fall under the same rules. But at the same time, there’s almost constantly a shortage of blood. Solution: pay donors. I’ve heard this suggested a few times by people. I think it’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion. We have X donors willing to do it for free. If we pay people, we should have those X + those donors that don’t think it’s worth their time.
Apparently not. Someone’s done an experiment and you get the reverse effect. You get fewer donors. The reasoning was really interesting, but it makes sense: People donate blood right now because it’s the right thing to do, it’s this small thing that they can do that helps others. There’s this altruistic feeling attached to it. It’s its own reward. Now when you offer people money, the reward is no longer the act, the reward is the money. You don’t get the altruistic feeling, cause someone is paying you. So now you weigh the pros and cons, do the value equation, and turns out Y$ for that hour of your time… just doesn’t add up, and fewer people do it.
People like doing things that make them happy. And having the complete freedom to do things as you want to do them is a great way to make someone happy.
I’ve had employers ask me why it was that I did work-like things in my spare time. I do a _lot_ of work-like (sometimes even actual work :P) on my nights and weekends. Why? Cause I can do it like I want. The goal there isn’t money, though the added income isn’t terrible. I get to run a project the way I want to run it, with the team I choose. It doesn’t feel like work, it’s just this activity I love doing.
(Note: I’ve actually had an awesome team at work over the last year)
The book doesn’t suggest a cookie-cutter solution that’ll work for every business. The goal is to realize that if you want people to be creative, you have to let them be creative, as opposed to forcing it out of them (though some due-dates are a fact of life).
I’m really looking forward to finishing the last half of Drive, and based on what I’ve read so far, I’d definitely recommend it to others.
Amazon Link to The Book: http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594488843/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0
Turns out Daniel Pink gave a TED talk which more or less sumarizes the first part of his book:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
(this post might be slightly incoherent, I just cut out about 60% of it cause I went off on a tangent… restructuring the rest was done pretty quickly)
