What Really Motivates People

January 19, 2010

Interview with Daniel Pink, author of the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

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Mike Carruthers:
Reward and punishment, the old "carrot and stick" are the classic methods organizations use to motivate their people. However…

Daniel Pink:
There’s actually a better approach to motivation that is not routed in carrots and sticks but has to do with autonomy and mastery and purpose.

Daniel Pink, author of the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us …

In the 21st Century when more and more of us are doing creative, conceptual, somewhat interesting work, companies that treat people like horses - as if they’re motivated only by carrots or the threat of the stick are actually going to fall behind. And companies that treat people like people - those are the companies that actually are flourishing and will continue to flourish.

As an example Daniel points to a software company in Australia called Atlassian.

And they do something really cool. Once a quarter they say to their software developers for the next 24 hours you can work on anything you want, you just have to show the results to the rest of the company in this fun meeting at the end of those 24 hours. They call these things "FedEx days" because you have to deliver something overnight. Well it turns out that that one day of undiluted autonomy has produced a whole array of ideas for new products that would never have emerged except for that FedEx day.

Which is not a typical carrot and stick motivation technique.

It’s saying, “You probably want to be innovative so let me just get out of your way and let you be innovative”. It’s a very different approach to motivation.

Tomorrow, more insight into what motivates people.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here