reading

Drive

Summary

When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system - which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators - doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an adopt a new system of motivation which has three elements:

1. Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives
2. Mastery - the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters
3. Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Operating Systems for Motivation

• when money is used as an external reward for some activity, people lose intrinsic interest for the activity
• Motivation 1.0 - survival
• Motivation 2.0 - improve performance, increase productivity, and encourage excellence by rewarding the good and punishing the bad
• extrinsic motivation - “if-then” rewards, bonuses, incentive plans, forced rankings
• Daniel Kahneman showed that people aren’t rational calculators of their economic self-interest
• algorithmic task - you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion
• heuristic task - no algorithm exist for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution
• external rewards and punishments - both carrots and sticks - can work nicely for algorithmic tasks but can be devastating for heuristic ones
• routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction
• non-routine, more interesting work depends on self-direction
• Motivation 2.0 two main ideas:
  • rewarding an activity will get you more of it
  • punishing an activity will get you less of it
• the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table
• rewards can transform an interesting task into a drudge and turn play into work
• contingent or if-then rewards have a negative effect because they require people to lose their autonomy
• rewards often incur the unintentional cost of undermining the person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity
• higher rewards don’t lead to higher performance
• financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance
• rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus
• intrinsic motivation - the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing - is essential for high levels of creativity
• if-then rewards usually do more harm than good by neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
• with extrinsic rewards, people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road
• with intrinsic motivation, the rewards is the activity itself
• by offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is inherently undesirable
• if-then rewards focus people on the short-term prize and crowds out long-term learning
• Carrots and Sticks Flaws:
  • extinguish intrinsic motivation
  • diminish performance
  • crush creativity
  • crowd out good behavior
  • encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
  • become addictive
  • foster short-term thinking
• without a fair and adequate baseline - compensation, benefits, etc. - any kind of motivation is difficult
• for routine tasks, which aren’t very interesting and don’t demand much creative thinking, rewards can provide a small motivational boost without the harmful side effects
• any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete
• holding out a prize at the beginning of a project will inevitably focus people’s attention on obtaining the reward rather than on attacking the problem
• shift from if-then rewards to now that rewards, but don’t let now that rewards become the expected norm
• non-tangible rewards - praise regarding effort and strategy vs achieving a particular outcome and positive feedback focused on specifics
• human beings have an universal, innate drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another
• Motivation 3.0 - assumes that humans also have a third drive - to learn, to create, and to better the world
• Type I behavior is fueled more by intrinsic desires than extrinsic ones and cares more about the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself
• it’s main motivators are freedom, challenge, and purpose of the undertaking itself
• it is self-directed and is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters

Autonomy

• ROWE - results-only work environment
• management’s paramount goal is compliance and its central ethic remains control
• management should be about creating conditions for people to do their best work
• a sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude
• Components:
  • Task - freedom to spend a portion of time on a personal or side project
  • Time - focus on what people get done, not how many hours or days worked
  • Technique - restores some measure of freedom and draws from a deeper pool of talent
  • Team - people working in self-organized teams are more satisfied than those working in inherited teams
• different individuals will prize different aspects of autonomy
• encouraging autonomy doesn’t mean discouraging accountability, people want to be accountable

Mastery

• autonomy leads to engagement, control leads to compliance
• mastery - the desire to get better and better at something that matters
• the most satisfying experiences in people’s lives are when they are in the flow state
• flaw is essential to mastery but it happens in a moment while mastery unfolds over months, years, decades
• Laws of Mastery:
  • Mastery is a Mindset - fixed mindset vs growth mindset
  • Mastery is a Pain - grit - perseverance and passion for long-term goals - is the best predictor of success
  • Mastery is an Asymptote - mastery is impossible to realize fully, the joy is in the pursuit
• the single greatest motivator is making progress in one’s work
• once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable

Purpose

• autonomous people working toward mastery and in service of some greater objective can achieve even more
• Realms of Organizational Life:
  • Goals - purpose over profit - pursue purpose and to use profit as the catalyst rather than the objective
  • Words - focus on the why vs the how in order to provide context for how what they do contributes to a larger whole
  • Policies - give employees control over how the organization give back to the community
• “One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• people who are very high in extrinsic goals for wealth are more likely to attain that wealth, but they’re still unhappy
• high attainers are busy making money which leaves less time for things that truly count for happiness - close relationships, love, caring
• the secret to high performance isn’t our biological or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution
• the richest experiences in our lives come when we’re listening to our own voice, doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves

For Parents

• we’re bribing students into compliance instead of challenging them into engagement
• autonomy over how and when students do schoolwork
• promote mastery by offering engaging tasks as opposed to rote reformulation of something already covered in class
• students should understand the purpose of how assignments contributes to the larger learning enterprise
• allowance - offers kids a measure of autonomy by letting them decide how to spend or save their money
• chores - show kids that families are built on mutual obligations and that family members all need to help each other
• by linking money to completion of chores, parents turn an allowance into an “if-then” reward, which converts a moral and familial obligation into just another commercial transaction
• help kids see the big picture by asking them to answer: Why am I studying this? How is it relevant to the world I live now?