Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

A fascinating video by Daniel Pink about what motivates us.  See his book Drive for much more.

4 comments:

Clint D said...

That was fantastic and educational - thanks so much!

thinking said...

Brilliant stuff; I've read the book, and this video does a fantastic job summarizing it.

More importantly, this points the way to a better way of working. This calls into question many of the assumptions used by most companies today to motivate employees, namely the carrot and stick approach.

Economics teaches that people respond to incentives, but this makes one question which incentives are truly the most effective.

Billy Oblivion said...

The problem is that ~70 percent of the people in an organization (or higher) are cognitively suited mostly mechanical work. They *do not* engage creatively, they have a bare minimum of self direction or engagement.

But more than that they do not realize it. So when they see the Engineers (for whom 90% DO have the self direction and engagement) getting to do cool stuff with 20% of their time (what google used to do) they get annoyed that THEY don't.

Oh, and they want their bonuses TOO.

Wendy Ham said...

I love this animation Brian! Great find!