I’ve reached the point that when someone asks, “What are you reading?” I sometimes have the good fortune to say, “Dan Pink.” Whatever this man writes, I want to read. He is a thinker who is at least 1.5 standard deviations beyond the bell curve. And he knows how to blend storytelling and research in ways that produce remarkably engaging and insightful writings.
In Drive, he “exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life.” He takes on some of our most sacred workplace cows: the “carrot-and-stick” mentality of getting others to do what we want, the blind reliance on external motivators, the whole premise of management. He counters them with what we all know experientially: that rewarding good behavior and punishing bad may curtail what we don’t want in the short term but does not enhance performance, creativity, or self-direction in the long term. He reminds us that we are all, by nature, curious and self-directed. If you doubt it, just look at any toddler. What fuels our motivation are not carrots and sticks but autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
When we get stuck in a set of well-intended but misguided beliefs about the human condition—as Dan illustrates in the first part of the book, using both research and real-life examples—we turn a blind eye to the self-organizing and self-correcting capacity of people at work as well as at play.
In another life, I was a literature major. So I find his frequent reliance on metaphors a refreshing way of presenting what we already know intuitively and are quick to ignore when we’re in a management seat. The book is built on an extended metaphor that likens motivation to computer operating systems: Motivation 1.0, which is survival; Motivation 2.0 and Motivation 2.1, which are variants on the pleasure-pain principle; and Motivation 3.0, which is anchored in the motivating power of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He also peppers the pages with one-shots like our “default settings,” our “motivation bucket,” and a reference to tossing management onto the “linguistic ash heap….’” In short, he knows how to engage our imaginations in ways that trigger emotional as well as logical responses.
Some criticize him for presenting “old” research on motivation. I applaud him for putting it into language that managers may finally begin to hear. There has always been a lag between what science discovers and what everyday people are able to translate into action and results. The fact that some of his research goes back 20, 30, even 60 years speaks more to the insular world in which most managers live and the slow pace at which we allow research findings to penetrate our awareness than it does to Pink’s choice of subject matter or his manner of presentation.
This is a man who sees the world with fresh eyes, who sees the absurdity of “what is” and knows how to frame “what might be” in simple stories and easy language. If you’re struggling with ways to motivate those you lead and are willing to examine how your own operating system may be the obstacle, then I recommend Drive.