The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us -- a mini-review

Hi everyone! A few days ago, I posted a first short article on motivation and money, that you can read here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/more-money-more-motivation-178200cfd3
And as I said back then, I wanted to talk about my current read.

If you haven’t read Daniel H. Pink’s book on the matter, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, let me share with you what I learnt from this interesting read. The book aims for business but also self improvement, it’s fast and easy to read, but more importantly, it’s really edifying.

It talks about this theory of carrots and sticks. What we learn and think is true in the business world, is that the good must be rewarded (carrot), while the bad must be punished (stick). Roughly, this means if you want your employee to work better, you’ll have to promise more money, whereas if the work is not done properly, you can threaten to fire them.

“The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.”

While this approach was the main one to keep your employees motivated to work was the most well-known, it started encountering resistance in the 50s. Indeed, this reward/punishment system not only does not work, often it even does harm. Experiments (like “the candle problem”) were conducted where groups of people were asked to perform certain tasks, some were promised lots of money in exchange, some only a little amount, and some weren’t promised anything. When the task was only involving mechanical skills, rewards worked as they would be expected: the higher the reward, the better the performance. But as soon as the task was calling for the slightest amount of cognitive skill, a higher pay led to poorer performance. (more details over there: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation?language=en)

That’s what Pink highlights in his book: for straightforward and repetitive (or algorithmic) work, this reward system can work (but not even in the long run), but for any creative and innovative (or heuristic) work, it is more counterproductive than anything else, as it can destroy creativity. Instead, the secret to high performances would be the intrinsic drive to do things for their own sake, because they matter.

“When the reward is the activity itself -- deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best -- there are no shortcuts.”

Pink goes on to explain 3 gifts you could give workers outside money:

1. Autonomy

If they can direct themselves and organize their work the way they want, this flexibility will encourage them to be creative, and stepping outside of the framework of conformity a superior would impose on them.

2. Mastery

If they have tasks they can get better at, they might want to become the best at it. It might sound a bit dull like this, but see it like this: would you feel more satisfied and fulfilled working for a tyran/a boss giving you more and more things to do without taking time to give you feedback on your work; or for someone coaching you, supporting you, and giving you the keys to improve in what you do for them? Seeing you’re getting better at what you do can eventually make you believe you’re actually working for no one else than yourself.

For any manager, boss, CEO or whoever thinking they are not praising their employees’ work properly, let me share with you this video on growth mindset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ. Sure, the video is about kids in school, but I think the lessons you can learn from it can be adapted to any work relation between an employee and their superior. Asking for quick results, which will have a negative impact on the employee’s creativity, and will put pressure on them. Sometimes, this can even lead to having the tasks being incomplete, or poorly done. So instead, it is suggested to praise their work process (their effort, strategy, focus, perseverance and progress).

3. Purpose

I don’t know any employee whose desire is to be a money-making machine for a company that has no bigger purpose than just making money, especially if this money is not theirs at the end of the day. Your employee must feel what they do is important, meaningful. Your company doesn’t necessarily have the ambition of saving the world (although that doesn’t sound too bad), having a project a bit deeper than gaining new customers and making money is likely to uplift the employees. They must be able to see the long-term goals, and to know why they are actually working with you.

Here you go guys, I hope this little article was helpful or at least interesting to you. And stay tuned, I have plenty of other topics I’d like to discuss with you, such as competition analysis, or an in depth tool comparison to do some company research (corepo.org, linkedin, crunchbase…).

Please leave any question or remark you might have in the comment section below, as I’d love to have your views on the matter. And let me know about your experience with keeping your employees motivated. What are your methods? Do you use apps and tools to help them be organized and productive while increasing their happiness? Did you focus on a role model you found on the internet or social media? Tell me everything you think I should know :)