Karen Lac - Quicklet on Ted Talks: Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation (Cliffnotes-like Summary)

When it comes to what motivates us at work, the conventional wisdom is money. Its long been established that if you want to motivate someone to do a better job, you pay them well and provide financial incentives to do an even better job. In companies throughout the United States and much the world, employees eagerly anticipate the day when they hear from their boss whether theyll be getting a bonus or pay raise.

But is money all that motivates us? Thinking on my own situation, there have been plenty of times when I was well compensated for a job but still didnt perform as well as I should have. There have also been times when I did everything that I could and put in a lot of time on jobs with lower pay. If you were to ask around your own family, friends, and colleagues, I suspect that youll find theyve experienced this as well.

This goes against everything that weve been told about motivation. The more I get paid, the better my job performance is supposed to be. This belief that money is the biggest driver of performance is so accepted that to suggest otherwise would almost be un-American.

In his talk, career analyst Dan Pink dares to question this basic assumption. Using results from scientific behavioral experiments, he shows that while money may be a motivator for jobs that involve lower-level mechanical tasks, it doesnt work for higher-level jobs that require cognitive skills. Instead, he shows that autonomy, mastery and purpose is what really motivates people.

In the end, what really motivates people is the ability to be the captain of their own ship. If there ever comes the time when I have to manage other people in jobs that require any level of independent thinking, I will know how to better motivate them thanks to Dan Pinks Ted Talk. Just gaining a better understanding of what really motivates me was well worth listening to him.

Dan Pink was supposed to be a lawyer after graduating from Yale Law School. Instead, he became a writer. This change in career trajectory, rejecting a relatively stable, well-paid and prestigious job path to pursue a career in a notoriously unstable field, no doubt led him to think deeply about careers and what really motivates people.

He is the author of four books. His first book, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself , was a Washington Post bestseller and became an indispensable book for those wanting to understand employee-management relations. His second book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide Youll Ever Need , made a big splash for being the first American business book written the Japanese comic book format manga. The very different format didnt prevent the book from being a success as well; it was a BusinessWeek bestseller and has been translated into several languages.

It is his following two books that have propelled Pink into the elite circle of in-demand authors. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future boldly describes the six abilities that individuals must have and that companies must nurture in order to succeed in todays economy. It is a New York Times bestseller and is available in over 24 languages.

His latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , is a bestseller on several lists, including the New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , and Publishers Weekly lists. Available in over 31 languages, it is also a bestseller in the United Kingdom and Japan. It is the research that he uncovered during the writing of this book that he discusses in his TED Talk.

Besides writing books, Pink also routinely contributes articles to various publications, provides business analysis to TV network, and lectures around the world. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his three children and wife.

Founded in 1984 with the purpose of sharing ideas worth spreading, TED began as a conference that brought together people from the technology, design, and entertainment industries. Since then, the nonprofit has expanded its scope to include people from a wide range of industries.

At TEDs annual conferences, influential professionals from diverse fields are challenged to give an inspiring talk in less than 18 minutes. These TED Talks are recorded and available for all to see on the TED website. Millions of people worldwide have watched videos of TED Talks, which are available with subtitles in multiple languages.

Dan Pinks talk was filmed July 2009 at TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford, United Kingdom. TEDGlobal is one of TEDs two annual conferences, the other being TED Conference which takes place in Long Beach, CA in the spring. As its name implies, TEDGlobal is more international in scope than TED Conference.

Pink used his 18 minutes to discuss a topic that is the subject of his latest book: motivation. What really motivates us to do a good job? Using evidence from scientific experiments done throughout the years, he shows the audience that managers have been wrong all along about what is the biggest driver of performance. Its not necessarily money!

Pink concedes that traditional financial rewards work for certain jobs, but not all. In jobs that require any level of cognitive skill, it is autonomy, mastery and purpose that really motivates. For these jobs, placing too much emphasis on financial rewards at the sacrifice of the true motivators actually reduces performance. Pinks TED talk seeks to change how companies manage their employees so that both performance and satisfaction rises.

Using scientific evidence, Dan Pink argues that the traditional carrots and sticks model of motivation, in which financial incentives are given or taken away, does not work for many jobs. Rather, what really works to push performance are autonomy, mastery and purpose. Pink first discusses how scientific evidence has shown that financial incentives doesnt always work, moves on to discuss what does work, and ends by giving examples of corporations who have successfully adopted the new model.

In 1945, psychologist Karl Dunker created an experiment called the candle problem. The candle problem presents participants with a candle, matches, and a box containing thumbtacks. The participants need to figure out how to attach the candle to the wall so that the candles wax doesnt drip down to the table when lit.

After about five to 10 minutes, most people figure out the solution, which is to empty the box of its thumbtacks, affix it to the wall with two thumbtacks, and put the candle on the box. People who can see the boxs possible use, beyond just being a receptacle for the thumbtacks, are able to solve the problem.

Scientist Sam Glucksberg added incentives to the candle problem. He split the participants into two groups. For one group, he offered them money if they were able to solve the problem quickly. For the other group, he simply told them that he was going to time them. The result: the incentivized group performed on average three and a half minutes longer.

Glucksbergs experiment has been repeated over and over again for 40 years. The result remains the same: for many tasks, carrots and sticks incentives dont work. Yet the standard business operating system is still built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks. According to Pink, there is a mismatch between what businesses do and what science knows.