Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

I can still remember when my dad came back from our dog's first training class. He was thrilled. We had been wondering how to get our German Shepherd, who didn't understand English, to sit. He had finally learned her language: thimble-sized chunks of hotdog. Turns out, dogs will do anything for a wiener, just like they'll stop doing most things at the sound of our raised voices. My dad could now motivate a dog. What he said next struck me as a little funny, "If only I had taken this class when you boys were younger, I would have been a much better parent." It was then that he realized the power of carrots and sticks.

Now that I work with kids on a daily basis, I use an arsenal of carrots and sticks. Carlos keeps aiming balled up handouts at Jennifer's head: that's a demerit. Jared only does his homework half of the time: he can go on spring trip if he turns starts turning it in. Carrots and sticks have been schools' primary tools for motivation since the start of public education. And they've worked well enough that we never really question them. Then comes this guy, Daniel H. Pink, and his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. It turns out that we should start questioning.

Drive is not about schools. It mostly speaks to the business world, but its insights have direct implications for us in the business of educating kids. Pink explains that just because carrots and sticks have been the motivational method of choice since the stone age, doesn't mean it's the best. He explains that our tendency to seek rewards and avoid punishment is pretty primitive and that a deeper drive exists. This drive, Pink calls Motivation 3.0, is the intrinsic motivation to do a job well.

Take for example my high school English teacher, Mrs. Moen. She came to school early and left late every day. She called parents, graded mountains of papers, and constantly innovated her curriculum, even after twenty-five years in the classroom. Why did she do this? There were no pay-for-performance incentives. She rarely even received a "thank-you." According to the carrots and sticks idea, Pink says, this doesn't make sense.

It turns out that she was driven by an internal fire Pink calls Motivation 3.0. This means that, more than rewards and punishments, people are motivated simply by working hard at a job they love. In order to tap into Motivation 3.0, people need three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Pink shows us dozens of examples where companies and leaders use these three motivators to garner amazing results. One such example is Google, where engineers get what's called 20% time. They get one day per week to work on whatever project they want. It is during this time that they've developed some of Google's most important programs, including Gmail and Google News. Pink cites that not only are people more motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, but that they produce better results.

This doesn't mean that carrots and sticks never work, just that we need to question whether or not there's a better way. YES Prep already embraces the idea of Motivation 3.0 on a large scale, giving faculty quite a bit of autonomy as to how they run their schools, programs, and classrooms. But is it enough? What if we gave teachers and students more autonomy as to what projects and skills they worked on? What if we gave our students a deeper sense of purpose by connecting their learning with the real world? I don't have the answers, but read this book and you'll start asking more questions.

In this book Daniel Pink describes some very interesting research on motivation showing that extrinsic motivators (rewards given for doing something I want you to do) definitely influence human behavior--but they often drive a different response than was intended. In particular, people tend to lose all personal interest and do only what leads to the reward, even when that means contorting the real goal. (He calls this Type X motivation.) He then goes on to show how intrinsic motivation (Type I) is the only driver that consistently produces the highest performance, adaptation, and particularly innovation. Of course, this has been known to scientists for decades (which Pink points out), but it is still almost entirely ignored when it comes to businesses setting up their internal incentive structures. The recent destructive behavior by the banking system, clearly very smart people, is a reflection of the distorting power of Type X motivation.

Pink does a good job of presenting and linking a lot of different studies and examples to make a strong case. Unlike his other book "A Whole New Mind," Pink goes beyond making the case and includes a number of chapters intended to help one master intrinsic motivation or Type I motivation. I found this material also very useful, particularly to the extent it cites additional reading, consultants, etc. that provide more on the topic. This part of the book is also very well done. Frankly, I still get the feeling that Pink is the outside observer who is assembling and summarizing all this work done by others rather than one who has really experienced the trials and nuances of making it happen. Nevertheless, the book is one of the best works I have seen that brings all the research and examples together in a coherent fashion to make a strong case. In today's economy, where innovation is the only sustainable differentiator, business leaders who want to stimulate innovation within their organizations will be well advised to pay attention to this book and its message.

Traditionalist executives who re-enforce and live only by the dated and dysfunctional methods of old-school business practices and beliefs will run scared when reading Pink's cogent work. The wiser among them will seek to evaluate and adjust their business practices, capturing a new essence of success.

Timely and thought provoking, Pink presents scientific findings on motivation that are consistent with separate and distinct reserach findings on innovation and employee engagement. Further, Pink's presentation is consistent with much of the wisdom and conclusions one can draw or generate from other current business guru's like Hamel, Bossidy, Lawler and Charran.

In his earlier work, Pink gave us clear insights to the implications of right/left brain research and the emergent world of work. DRiVE extends this work and takes understanding of human movitivation and resultant behaviors to a new level.

Tom Wiltzius, PhD

The three poinst Pink makes are that intrinsic motivation is based on purpose, mastery and autonomy.
There are some great examples and he makes some great points. The book gets a bit redundant at the end. I think
there are other books about intrinsic motivation that are excellent as well such as Flow and Full Throttle, which I would recommend.

Drive by Daniel Pink is a quality reflection on what motivates others and yourself. Some of his ideas are new and others are ones that we, as a reader, may just not have thought of recently. The book is simply set into three parts and here is my summary of the parts. Part 1: How does motivation play a role in society? Part 2: 3 keys to being a driven person, Part 3: Tool kit to become better. The best part of the entire book is in the tool kit portion which is dedicated to make you a more driven person as well as focusing hard on "driving" those who may work for you to be better. This book is both technical and practical. The ideas written about are not revolutionary but really make you think of how to do things better. Drive is a solid read that is very much set up for people who are leaders within any type of organization or those who are wanting to better themselves.