DRiVE – my recap

Mathieu — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:44:44 +0000

A year or so ago I read Dan Pink’s book A Whole New Mind and was really impressed. Pink presented a challenge to look at the world an entirely new way backed up with clear analysis and intrepid arguments. I thoroughly enjoyed A Whole New Mind so when his latest title, DRiVE, became available I picked it up.
I was actually in the middle of another book, The Opposable Mind, but after reading the first chapter of DRiVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, I was hooked. I bought it electronically and read it via the iPhone app Kobo.

DRiVE is a natural progression from A Whole New Mind. In A Whole New Mind, Pink argued we has a race had progressed through three “ages” and the fourth age, the conceptual age is where we can excel. In DRiVE he makes the case for different strategies for motivating ourselves, our coworkers, our family and our communities (for the purpose of this recap I’ll focus on how it applies to a business environment but there’s just as much in there for personal growth and families).

He lays the foundation for the book by suggesting humans, like software have gone through two versions: motivation one, where our basic operating system was fuelled by the need to survive. Motivation two introduced us to the idea of seeking out rewards and avoiding punishment and finally – our latest upgrade – motivation three “presumes that humans also have a third drive – to learn, to create and to better the world.”

So how does this translate into the real world? Pink uses several examples illustrating the downfalls of motivation two. While motivation two was definitely the version humans used to spur the explore across the oceans, found new countries and spur the industrial revolution it is not able to work with today’s motivation three humans.

For example, a day care in Israel had a policy that all children had to be picked up by 5 p.m.. The amount of late parents was minimal but they decided to introduce a new policy, if you were late picking up your child you would be charged a nominal fee which would be added to your monthly bill. Administrators expected the amount of late parents would reduce but in fact it dramatically increased.

When there was no carrot and stick to persuade the parents to come early they were motivated by their good will.

But when the day care introduced the late charge, parents felt it was now okay to come late because they were paying for it.

Pink also sited studies where subjects would be divided into two groups, one where they would be paid to perform a function and another where they were not paid. Surprisingly the group that was paid would not outperform the unpaid group.

If you translate this into the workplace it establishes an interesting problem: how do you motivate employees to do their work? Pink says the first thing you have to do is take the issue of money and benefits off the table and you do this simply by ensuring your employees are paid fairly both inside and outside of the company. So people who have similar experience and responsibilities should be paid the same. Those same people should also be paid comparably to positions at employees at similar companies. The key here is you can’t use money and benefits to motivate employees, you can only use it to keep them from being demotivated.

There are three elements you can offer employees to keep them motivated:

Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose

Autonomy: Pink points to Best Buy’s Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) as the best example of offering employees Autonomy. Under this system employees set their own hours and meetings are completely optional.
Employees are paid based on results, not attendance

Mastery: I’ll put this into my own thoughts. Mastery is the action of offering your employees to become better every day. Whether that attending workshops and training that directly helps them on the job or by making educational benefits available for things like golf lessons or to get your real estate license.

Purpose: Provide employees with the knowledge that what they are doing is greater than just meeting quarterly profits.

DRiVE is divided up into three sections with the final section being a field guide for how you can test the waters with the ideas he presents in the book. What makes this section particularly useful is if you’ve gotten this far you’re probably convinced that what he’s saying has some merit and you’re motivated to put the axe to the grindstone.

For me, Pink was preaching to the choir with DRiVE. I’ve had lots of conversations with my close friends about what motivates us and less and less the answer is money. Even status and prestige are taking back seats to personal growth and giving back. DRiVE is the roadmap for any organization that wants to excel in 2010 and beyond and its clear and digestible style makes it an easy playbook to follow.

Posted via email from Mathieu’s posterous

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Mathieu — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:12:14 +0000

Inspired by a suggestion from Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, I asked my staff from the Centennial College student newspaper, The Courier to look at the above picture and then write five words to the beginning of a story inspired by the photo.

I put each person’s five words into a hat and the staff drew them at random. Their assignment was to write the rest of the story but they were limited to 45 words. They had one week and here are the results:

Getting ready for the harvest, I wake up at four a.m.. I quickly run downstairs for breakfast. I then go out to the shed, the door is locked so I search my pocket for the key. I open the door, and find Dad on the floor, dead.

He thought what he did was right. He thought he was doing what was best for everyone. Everyone loved Mildred, but winter would soon be here and food was already scarce. Julia was heartbroken. Jacob hadn’t spoken since it happened. But their bellies were full and that goat was tasty.

Olga stumbles home rake in hand. Shes spent all day on a farm, hoeing the earth desperately searching for the fabled food. The truffle, a mushroom in France, is a rare ingredient normally found by specially trained pigs. Thanks to a disease the pigs are dead and Olga has a new, but fruitless job.

Sunrise is already midday for the Venezuelan coca farmers working in the still-dark early morning. Instead of open fields, their beans only grow sheltered in the dense thickets of the jungle. Their lush forests may produce the best beans, but for South American’s coca farmers, it’s no sweet life.

It began in a field. The woman trudged pas the towering tree headed for home. The sun peeked from beyond the horizon. Splashes of honeysuckle and golden rod dotted the grassland like an impressionist painting. But, the woman dared not dally. Just thirty minutes remained before the gates to town were barred shut and sundown was fast approaching. Then, The Chupacabras would return for their nightly goat-sucking. She quickened her pace.

A cloudy horizon fills with tempestuous clouds swirlying feverishly. In a barren fiel, gusts of wind begin to ripple through the grass and a low rumbling of thunder echoes in the distance. The field is void of life, as every living creature takes refuge from the incoming storm – except one.

It started in a field, as it did every morning. He was up before the sun, watched it rise over his land. He liked to work alone, there was a peace in the earth, in the sky. For some it would not be enough to have this farm grow things.

The girl set out at dawn inhopes of catching thieves in the act. The drought had ravished the land and the family farm was failing. There’s was no the only one, however, and hungry villagers would head to the fields at night to find what little food they could.

There was once a man with broken hands,
And everything he would touch, he would make broken.
He was content with empty husks,
But they too, broke and crumbled to dust.
And so he searched far and wide but all he could find was his divided mind.
And even that,
He left broken.

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DRiVE – my recap

Nine great mini epilogues