Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

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Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Drive-book.png
Hardcover edition
Author Daniel H. Pink
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Riverhead Hardcover
Publication date
December 29, 2009
Media typePrint (Hardback), E-book, Audiobook
Pages256
ISBN 978-1594488849
OCLC 311778265

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is a non-fiction book written by Daniel Pink. The book was published in 2009 by Riverhead Hardcover. It argues that human motivation is largely intrinsic and that the aspects of this motivation can be divided into autonomy, mastery, and purpose. [1] He argues against old models of motivation driven by rewards and fear of punishment, dominated by extrinsic factors such as money. [2] [3]

Contents

Summary

The book asserts that based on studies done at MIT and other universities, [4] higher pay and bonuses result in better performance within the workplace only if tasks consist of basic mechanical skills. If the task involved cognitive skills, decision-making, creativity, or higher-order thinking, higher pay resulted in lower performance. Pink suggests, "You should pay enough to take the issue of money off the table".

To motivate employees who work beyond basic tasks, Pink believes that supporting employees in the following areas will result in increased performance and satisfaction:

Reception

Stefan Stern, writing for the Los Angeles Times calls the book, "short, punchy, energetic and not subtle", praising the writing, but arguing that Pink overstates his case. [6] In The Guardian, William Leith identifies Drive as vying for attention in "the Gladwell market", but still finds it "inspiring" for its message that thinking of work as art inspires more than the "carrot-and-stick." [7]

Related Research Articles

Work design is an area of research and practice within industrial and organizational psychology, and is concerned with the "content and organization of one's work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities" (p. 662). Research has demonstrated that work design has important implications for individual employees, teams, organisations, and society.

Drive or The Drive may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Incentive</span> Something that motivates individuals to perform

In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behavior in the desired manner. It is emphasized that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behavior, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of effort and therefore higher levels of performance.

The two-factor theory states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction, all of which act independently of each other. It was developed by psychologist Frederick Herzberg.

Content theory is a subset of motivational theories that try to define what motivates people. Content theories of motivation often describe a system of needs that motivate peoples' actions. While process theories of motivation attempt to explain how and why our motivations affect our behaviors, content theories of motivation attempt to define what those motives or needs are. Content theory includes the work of David McClelland, Abraham Maslow and other psychologists.

Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed in order to motivate and guide a person or group toward a goal. Goals are more deliberate than desires and momentary intentions. Therefore, setting goals means that a person has committed thought, emotion, and behavior towards attaining the goal. In doing so, the goal setter has established a desired future state which differs from their current state thus creating a mismatch which in turn spurs future actions. Goal setting can be guided by goal-setting criteria such as SMART criteria. Goal setting is a major component of personal-development and management literature. Studies by Edwin A. Locke and his colleagues, most notably, Gary Latham have shown that more specific and ambitious goals lead to more performance improvement than easy or general goals. The goals should be specific, time constrained and difficult. Vague goals reduce limited attention resources. Unrealistically short time limits intensify the difficulty of the goal outside the intentional level and disproportionate time limits are not encouraging. Difficult goals should be set ideally at the 90th percentile of performance,assuming that motivation and not ability is limiting attainment of that level of performance. As long as the person accepts the goal, has the ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals, there is a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance.

The overjustification effect occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. Overjustification is an explanation for the phenomenon known as motivational "crowding out". The overall effect of offering a reward for a previously unrewarded activity is a shift to extrinsic motivation and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Once rewards are no longer offered, interest in the activity is lost; prior intrinsic motivation does not return, and extrinsic rewards must be continuously offered as motivation to sustain the activity.

Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's innate growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It pertains to the motivation behind people's choices in the absence of external influences and distractions. SDT focuses on the degree to which human behavior is self-motivated and self-determined.

Performance-related pay or pay for performance, not to be confused with performance-related pay rise, is a salary or wages paid system based on positioning the individual, or team, on their pay band according to how well they perform. Car salesmen or production line workers, for example, may be paid in this way, or through commission.

Puget Sound Community School (PSCS) is a small private, independent, secular middle and high school in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1994 by Andy Smallman and his wife Melinda Shaw.

Contextual learning is based on a constructivist theory of teaching and learning. Learning takes place when teachers are able to present information in such a way that students are able to construct meaning based on their own experiences. Contextual learning experiences include internships, service learning and study abroad programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel H. Pink</span> American author (born 1964)

Daniel H. Pink is an American author. He has written seven New York Times bestsellers. He was a host and a co-executive producer of the National Geographic Channel social science TV series Crowd Control. From 1995 to 1997, he was the chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore.

A results-only work environment (ROWE) is a work approach in which employees are entirely autonomous and responsible for delivering outcomes. This managerial tactic redirects attention from the hours spent at work to the results generated. Leaders mentor performance and oversee the work itself, instead of micromanaging employees' time.

Managerial psychology is a sub-discipline of industrial and organizational psychology that focuses on the effectiveness of individuals and groups in the workplace, using behavioral science.

Positive psychology is defined as a method of building on what is good and what is already working instead of attempting to stimulate improvement by focusing on the weak links in an individual, a group, or in this case, a company. Implementing positive psychology in the workplace means creating an environment that is more enjoyable, productive, and values individual employees. This also means creating a work schedule that does not lead to emotional and physical distress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pay-for-Performance (Federal Government)</span>

Pay-for-Performance is a method of employee motivation meant to improve performance in the United States federal government by offering incentives such as salary increases, bonuses, and benefits. It is a similar concept to Merit Pay for public teachers and it follows basic models from Performance-related Pay in the private sector. According to recent studies, however, there are key differences in how pay-for-performance models influence federal employees in public service roles. James Perry is one scholar who has conducted such studies. His research reveals that public servants tend to be more intrinsically motivated, and thus, are prone to have a negative reaction to monetary incentives. There is still debate, however, on what exactly makes the public sector different.

Work motivation is a person's internal disposition toward work. To further this, an incentive is the anticipated reward or aversive event available in the environment. While motivation can often be used as a tool to help predict behavior, it varies greatly among individuals and must often be combined with ability and environmental factors to actually influence behavior and performance. Results from a 2012 study, which examined age-related differences in work motivation, suggest a "shift in people's motives" rather than a general decline in motivation with age. That is, it seemed that older employees were less motivated by extrinsically related features of a job, but more by intrinsically rewarding job features. Work motivation is strongly influenced by certain cultural characteristics. Between countries with comparable levels of economic development, collectivist countries tend to have higher levels of work motivation than do countries that tend toward individualism. Similarly measured, higher levels of work motivation can be found in countries that exhibit a long versus a short-term orientation. Also, while national income is not itself a strong predictor of work motivation, indicators that describe a nation's economic strength and stability, such as life expectancy, are. Work motivation decreases as a nation's long-term economic strength increases. Currently work motivation research has explored motivation that may not be consciously driven. This method goal setting is referred to as goal priming. Effects of primed subconscious goals in addition to goals that are consciously set related to job performance have been studied by Stajkovic, Latham, Sergent, and Peterson, who conducted research on a CEO of a for-profit business organization using goal priming to motivate job performance. Goal priming refers to the achievement of a goal by external cues given. These cues can affect information processing and behaviour the pursuit of this goal. In this study, the goal was primed by the CEO using achievement related words strategy placed in emails to employees. This seemingly small gesture alone not only cost the CEO very little money, but it increased objectively measured performance efficiency by 35% and effectiveness by 15% over the course of a 5-day work week. There has been controversy about the true efficacy of this work as to date, only four goal priming experiments have been conducted. However, the results of these studies found support for the hypothesis that primed goals do enhance performance in a for-profit business organization setting.

Employee motivation is an intrinsic and internal drive to put forth the necessary effort and action towards work-related activities. It has been broadly defined as the "psychological forces that determine the direction of a person's behavior in an organisation, a person's level of effort and a person's level of persistence". Also, "Motivation can be thought of as the willingness to expend energy to achieve a goal or a reward. Motivation at work has been defined as 'the sum of the processes that influence the arousal, direction, and maintenance of behaviors relevant to work settings'." Motivated employees are essential to the success of an organization as motivated employees are generally more productive at the work place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gamification of learning</span> Educational approach aiming to promote learning by using video game design and game elements

The gamification of learning is an educational approach that seeks to motivate students by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. The goal is to maximize enjoyment and engagement by capturing the interest of learners and inspiring them to continue learning. Gamification, broadly defined, is the process of defining the elements which comprise games, make those games fun, and motivate players to continue playing, then using those same elements in a non-game context to influence behavior. In other words, gamification is the introduction of game elements into a traditionally non-game situation.

Employee motivation, also known as work motivation, is a feature of employees that refers to how motivated they are to work. It has a significant impact on employee productivity and efficiency." While motivation is defined as why individuals do or participate in certain behaviors.

References

  1. Silber, Kenneth (May 7, 2010). "MIND Reviews: Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us". Scientific American . Archived from the original on 2012-10-14.
  2. Eisenberg, Richard (January 29, 2010). "'Drive' author Daniel Pink: Raises make bad motivators". USA Today.
  3. Cameron, Chris (May 14, 2010). "Weekend Reading: Drive, by Daniel Pink".
  4. Ariely, Dan; Gneezy, Uri; Loewenstein, George; Mazar, Nina (July 2008). "Large Stakes and Big Mistakes" (PDF). Review of Economic Studies (76): 451–469.
  5. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: (2009) The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Books, New York, New York
  6. Stern, Stefan (8 August 2010). "Book review: 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us' by Daniel Pink". L.A. Times. California Times. Retrieved 5 April 2023.
  7. Leith, William (27 February 2010). "What Works by Hamish McRae and Drive by Daniel H Pink". The Guardian . Retrieved 5 April 2023.