Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

DRiVE: A must read for parents/teachers/supervisors

Excellent research backs up a great premise, that the work we do should be valuable to us on a level other than the dollar we earn. The internal values which feed our enjoyment and dedication to work are explored. In addition to showing methods for making the way we design and develop the workplace or classroom, Mr. Pink gives people at the start or ready to change their worklife the tools to evaluate where they want to go, what they personally value and how to seek more than a paycheck.

I've recommended this book to several managers and execs I work for, and to friends who teach and coach young people.

I appreciate the Add-Ins at the end of the book, and the bibliography which allows for further reading.

16 out of 16 people found this review helpful.

Enter "Drive." This could have been so much better.

As a consultant, I am particularly sensitive to unhelpful jargon and the creation of distinctions without a difference. Enter "Drive." This could have been so much better. As Pink presents correctly, much of the research re human motivation IS counter-intuitive to what most of us tend to think is the best way to reward, incentivize or bribe people to act in beneficial ways. Unfortunately, Pink insists on creating such a tower of babble -- "motivation 3.0," "type-I," "ROE," "if/then contingent rewards," vs. "now/that rewards" -- that we see the cracks and not the solid surface.

Further, why do consultants need to frame everything as either/or (implicit / explicit) when it is in acknowledging the shadings and spectrum that broader engagement comes? This is a book for the choir and not the congregation. So far this year, I've reviewed two other books which have done a much more effective job of covering very similar terrain: Seth Godin's "Lynchpin" and Jeff Jarvis' "What would Google do?"

5 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

People don't lead people, people lead themselves!

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

My name is David Marquet, from Practicum, Inc and we help our customers structure their organizations to maximize the potential of their people. We call this leadership. When we talk with our clients one of the things we ask them is "do you need your boss to motivate you?" Very few people raise their hands. Thus, it wasn't a surprise to read in Daniel Pink's recent book, Drive, that people do not respond best to external motivation.


Pink's book is very helpful because it clearly illuminates and explains what we've observed - that external motivation ends up feeling like manipulation and that people will do better in a structure that allows them to find their own intrinsic sources of motivation.


What are the characteristics of those structures? Pink tells us they are structures that enable individual autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In our practice, we had been emphasizing control, competence, and connection as being important. While control parallels autonomy and mastery parallels autonomy, purpose is an element we had not singled out.


We think Pink is right, though. Connecting your activity to a higher purpose does give people a reason beyond the immediate that seems necessary to sustain enduring loyalty to the mission. This was particularly true aboard submarines, where crews that understood how their tasks, however difficult, supported a greater goal (defending the Constitution, for example), performed better.


Drive is a quick read and we recommend it.

5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

Herzberg Redux

The book covers a very interesting topic and one highly relevant for practicing managers.


That said however, it is really simply a restatement of what Herzberg and Kohn have been saying for years. You can't buy performance. Pay enough, but then to really motivate employees, you need to tap into higher order needs (see Maslow).

I think it's a good discussion to have, but there is a role for all types of rewards and recommendations.

I am afraid that practicing managers will get it in their head that money and rewards aren't important to employees, when they really are. It's just that there are other important things as well.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Dan Pink does it again!

While I was in awe with "A whole new mind," Dan Pink did it again with "Drive." He talks about what truly motivates us. It's a great read for people who want to break out of the extrinsic rewards mold! It also gives people who are in a struggling situation. I recommend Dan Pink's books for all young people who "feel bad" about not having the perfect job or lifestyle. Reading Pink's books will give you hope to truly follow your own desires because in the end, this is most profitable!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Brianna

U think i stick my tongue down random ppls throats and ur wrong.. ive only loved u and only U but u think otherweise which is very sad

Drake

I get that. What is ur main point?

Excellent - recommend it highly

I am going to have my master's degree students read it! Short, simple, to the point. Stimulates a lot of questions and discussion.

Inspirational Redirection

If you are steeped int he world of traditional business philosophy, you need to read this book. I recently graduated with an MBA from a very progressive and highly acclaimed B-School and much research that I was part of and/or studied through case study, etc., correlated to the information in this book. It is a good read, and contains a lot of groundbreaking material. I would say this is a much read fo all managers who want to build a sustainable system inside their business or business unit. At the very least this book will give you important tools to add to your toolkit.

IBM Competitive Edge Book Club Selects Book in Q2 2010

The IBM Competitive Edge Book Club, open to all Sales, Marketing, and Communication professionals at IBM, voted and selected "Drive" as the Q2 2010 book selection. Overall feedback from the members was great. In the feedback from the members, we ask them the question - "What will you do differently in your job since your study of this book?" Some of the replies directly from the members included: - "Be more mindful of the three topics of mastery, autonomy and purpose for myself and also my co workers." - "This book provides a new framework to look at my own and colleagues behavior, and understand how to continue to improve driving to results." - "Give more thought to motivational aspects of tasks when working with a team." - "This book has really made me consider other motivations that compel people to take action." - "Use it (the book) in working with cross functional teams. Should change the way we drive behavior as well." I would like to personally thank Daniel for being apart of the IBM Competitive Edge Book Club experience and for creating a book that one can learn from and apply to everyday life. Best Regards, Brien Convery IBM Business Operations Leader and Competitive Edge Book Club Leader

Good Enough to Read

I think this book is definitely good enough to read. People are a corporation's most valuable asset and this book does a better-than-good job teaching on the subject. Another book that I read recently: Generational Wealth: Business & Investing Guide to Building an Empire also does a good job of explaining the factors that motivate people and how to respond to the needs of employees. The book also covers every other important business subject that you can think of. In my opinion, "Drive" is good enough to read, while Generational Wealth is so good that you must read it.

This book will change your brain

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates It by Daniel Pink was admittedly a fun and easy read, but isn't short on the substance. The way Pink challenges the normal paradigms of motivation convinced me that he was onto something. He explains why "carrot and stick" incentives fall short and what you need to consider when motivating people who have progressed beyond the outdated methods in place today. Pink outlines what is needed to inspire motivation in people and they aren't too wild. In fact, they are pretty obvious. He calls it intrinsic motivation, which means the person is inspired because they are engaged, not because they are being coaxed into it. I found Pink's explanation and breakdown of how to achieve intrinsic motivation simple and clear. As a future teacher, motivating students to get excited about the content is very important. Though this book is aimed at businessmen and economists, Pink's model will be particularly helpful to me when I start teaching. I will do my best to promote autonomy, mastery and purpose to motivate my students to achieve higher levels of learning. This book was recommended to me and I recommend it to anyone because it has something for everyone.

ebook costs more than the hardcover?? Fail!!

I already have the hard copy of this book, but hate carrying around books and hoped to pick up the ebook version. To my surprise, it costs even more than the hard copy. This is a huge reason why I won't be buying too many ebooks for my NookColor anytime soon. This is a big FAIL on the part of the publishers.

A good read, insightful

I thought the information was very good and helpful. However I thought it was about an hour's worth of information in a five hour effort

Drive is motivational

Drive was an easy read, so much so it would be easy to overlook the depth of the subject. Pink makes an excellent argument to challenge our common business approach to "motivating" people by suggesting that "management" is not natural, it is a technology, something that was invented. We aren't really motivated by the "carrot and stick" approach, at least not always in a positive sense. So what if you could make "work" into something more akin to "play"? Pink suggests there is a way, albeit not necessarily an easy way.

I also appreciated the fact that he acknowledges that his theory probably doesn't work every where in every situation, and that when it does, it requires forethought and planning. And a lot of it.

Drive is worth the read, if nothing else than to challenge the status quo.

Great Read

Very insightful and thought provoking.

Another Pink Success

Pink's latest work is informative and just as relevant as his other work "A Whole New Mind." Drive clearly lays out the truth of what motivates us--and what does not--and has clear implications for parents and business alike. While we can all benefit, those in managerial positions can't afford not to read this important work.

Fascinating point

I read this book and gave a presentation at work about it. We had a more lively discussion about it than we have about the other books we've talked about and everyone left, trying to figure out ways we could incorporate the knowledge into what we do. It was well-written and thought provoking, but we were having trouble figuring out how to fit some of these suggestions into our current organization.

What DRIVE might teach us about motivating bankers to more responsible (and profitable) behavior

There's a lot of hand wringing about what will happen to the entire economy if the financial sector is reined in:
* Will "under paid" (therefore presumably under qualified) bankers screw up the economy?
* Will all the good financiers move to hedge funds, leaving our big banks in the hands of a bunch of brain-dead drones willing to work for a mere 25x their average company worker's wage?
* Is limiting banker compensation the last nail in capitalism's coffin?

In DRIVE, Mr Pink says Motivation 1.0 centered around survival. Sometimes survival meant stealing a meal or a spouse but eventually the human species figured out that cooperation was a less painful, more humane way to conduct ourselves, and Motivation 2.0 came into being.

Motivation 2.0 centered around punishment and reward and "it is so deeply embedded in our lives that most of us scarcely recognize that it exists."

"Despite its greater sophistication and higher aspirations, Motivation 2.0 still wasn't exactly ennobling. It suggested that, in the end, human beings aren't much different from horses -- that the way to get us moving in the right direction is by dangling a crunchier carrot or wielding a sharper stick. But what this operating system lacked in enlightenment, it made up for in effectiveness. It worked well, extremely well. Until it didn't."

The Seven Deadly Flaws of Carrots and Sticks:
1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
2. They can diminish performance
3. They can crush creativity
4. They can crowd out good behavior
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
6. They can become addictive
7. They can foster short-term thinking

This is not to say that carrots and sticks are always bad. DRIVE has a chapter on circumstances where punishment and rewards work very well, thank you very much. But we're headed full gallop into Motivation 3.0, which recognizes that while people are at times profit maximizers (and therefore extrinsically driven), we are also "purpose maximizers," which means we're motivated intrinsically as well.

Mr Pink quotes Bruno Frey, an economist at the University of Zurich says "Intrinsic motivation is of great importance for all economic activities. It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives."

DRIVE lists several highly successful business people who are driven by intrinsics to achieve and even asks us to ponder whether the intrinsically-motivated Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey are any less economically successful than Jeff Skilling and Donald Trump (whom most would agree are Motivation 2.0 poster boys).

For more on this topic visit: http://tamelarich.com/2010/perspective/banker-motivation/

An eye opener

I found Drive to an insightful and very applicable read to my work and personal life. I read this book right after Compete, Play, Win and between the two of them, I learned a great deal about self examination in order to maximize my success. While it sounds intuitive that you should be working for your individual goal, we allow so many other influences to dictate what should be coming from within. Our goal in life is to channel our desires, motivations and competitive spirits toward our individual goals, wants and desires free from outside influence.