Jeremy Y. Peterson - Book Summary: Drive - Daniel H Pink (The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

Book Summary: Drive - Daniel H Pink

The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

By

Jeremy Y. Peterson

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Part 1: A New Operating System

CHAPTER 1: The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0

CHAPTER 2: Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Dont Work...

Extinguishing Intrinsic Motivation

Diminishing Performance

Crushing Creativity

Crowding Out Good Behavior

Encouraging Cheating, Shortcuts, and Unethical Behavior

Becoming Addictive

Fostering Short-Term Thinking

CHAPTER 2A:... and the Special Circumstances When They Do

CHAPTER 3: Type I and Type X

Part 2: The Three Elements

CHAPTER 4: Autonomy

CHAPTER 5: Mastery

CHAPTER 6: Purpose

Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

I t was previously stated by scientists that there are only two main drives that affects our behavior biological (we eat and drink to satisfy our hunger and thirst) and the external drive (reward me and Ill work harder). The former pertains to the basic needs in order to physically survive such as hunger, thirst, sex and self-preservation. The latter means that there is a counterpart reward or punishment in doing or not doing something. We have long believed that rewards and incentives, especially money expands our interest and boosts our performance. If we are rewarded, wed perform even better.

But an experiment made by Harry Harlow on monkeys counteract the realistic application of the first two drives but rather demonstrated the existence of the third and stronger drive intrinsic motivation. In this drive, the joy or enjoyment of doing the task is the reward. This proposition will later be verified by Edward Deci, who conducted his own experiment on male and female university participants. As he wrote, when money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subject lose intrinsic interest for the activity. On the other hand, even without the injection of external rewards, we tend to seek out challenges to explore and learn thus giving us the intrinsic drive.

Much of what we believe on the subject is not what it is in reality. What we thought as fixed laws on our behavior has really some loopholes on it. Why we do what we do? The good news is that the answer is just really in front of us. As Daniel Pink puts it, there has been a gap between what sciences have proved and what business does. The author aimed to fill in the gap.

Part 1: A New Operating System

T HIS CHAPTER STARTS with a scenario. Imagine its 1995 and you are to ask the opinion of an economist on which encyclopedia will be more successful in 2010. There are 2 encyclopedias. The first encyclopedia comes from Microsoft which will pay professional writers and editors to write articles on thousands of topics. Writers, editors, and managers will be well-compensated to make sure it will be completed on budget and on time.

The second encyclopedia, on the other hand, will be created by tens of thousands of people who write and edit articles for fun yet they wont be paid to write or edit these articles. The produced encyclopedia will be available online for free to those who wants to use it.

Now, you ask the economist to predict which one of these encyclopedias will be the largest and most popular in the world while the other will be obsolete. At that time, 1995, someone may think that the question is a no-brainer. It was very practical to select the first model. But you know how things turned out. On October 31, 2009, Microsoft dismissed MSN Encarta, which had been on the market for 16 years. In the meantime, Wikipedia, which is the second model, ended up becoming the largest and most popular encyclopedia in the world.

What happened? Our view of human motivation at that time will not be able to explain the result.

T HE TRIUMPH OF CARROTS AND STICKS

Societies have operating systems which are based on human behavior. They are as follows:

Motivation 1.0 the early operating system (started fifty thousand years ago) which means that we work because we were trying to physically survive and get our basic needs like food, clothing and sex. Biological urges worked well. Until it didnt. Thus arrived the revised operating system.

Motivation 2.0 We still have our first drive but we also developed a second driveto seek reward and avoid punishment. This operating system is still widely used in the society. As a matter of fact, at work employers will reward you if you work harder but will punish you if you do not do your job properly. It served us well. Until it didnt. Thus we need another upgrade.

Motivation 3.0 the upgrade that we need for the 21st century to meet the demand on how we organize, think about and do what we do. This operating system presumes that human have inner drive to explore and work even without the injection of external rewards.

T HREE INCOMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS

Our current operating system (Motivation 2.0) sometimes works but oftentimes it doesnt. Moreover, there have been some glitches on the following: how we organize what we do; how we think about what we do; and how we do what we do.