Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink, Daniel H.

Pink takes a look at much the same evidence base as Lawrence and Nohria do in Driven with a slightly different purpose. His take is that organizations rely too heavily on extrinsic motivators (carrots and sticks) at the expense of tapping into much more powerful intrinsic motivators. He is less interested in building a robust model of human behavior in organization than he is in trying to distill some practical short term advice. It makes for an easier read than Driven and Pink is a much better story-teller than Lawrence and Nohria. On the other hand, it sacrifices some important depth in the process.

Pink was also a speaker at last year’s TED conference; the video from that talk gives you the gist of his argument in 20 minutes:

Pink is the latest in a raft of authors pointing out that the conventional wisdom behind motivation and performance is pretty lame. The problem is that being conventional means that it’s deeply embedded in current practice. Once you begin to understand and accept what the evidence base says about motivation, you are left with the challenge of how to take advantage of your new understanding in the face of entrenched systems and practices that haven’t caught up with you. Sharing Pink’s book with your colleagues wouldn’t be a bad way to start.

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One thought on “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”

  1. Pingback: McGee’s Musings : More from Dan Pink on the Science of Motivation and Purpose

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