Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

I just finished watching Daniel Pink’s (@danielpink) lecture on what really motivates people. It’s a packed 18 minutes of YouTube glory, but I want to chat about a few points that really stuck with me.  

•Incentives only work well with mechanical tasks – That’s right, commissions and bonuses mean nothing to people working on abstract tasks and solving problems.  Wow, talk about punching a hole into just about every salesman’s balloon.  When you first think about it, it might seem completely obtuse, flying in the face of our beautiful free-market capitalism.

But after listening to Dan a little longer, it starts to make sense. Adding a little to his lecture, my take is pretty simple.  It’s not just about the money; people need to believe when they spend 8 hours a day, five days a week for decades working on something, that they are working towards a greater cause.  It’s gotta mean something, not just to the worker but to the World. 

• “Management didn’t emanate from nature.  Management is not a tree, it’s a TV… someone invented it, and it doesn’t mean it’s going to work forever.”  This one is sure to make disgruntled employees around the world thrust their fist in the air in defiance of their overlord managers.  But don’t get too carried away because the implications of not being managed may not be evident at first take.

It’s pretty simple – you’re going to have to think for yourself.

Yup, that’s right. No management means you have to figure out the problem, not wait for someone to tell you what to do.  If we’re all honest for a minute, we’ve really gotten comfy with other people making decisions that we are cleared to not care about and f-up. Yikes, a zinger there, but… deep in your soul search, and find it true you will.

•Fedex days – You have 24 hours to work on anything you want.  Only catch, you have to deliver something at the end of those 24 hours and present it to the company.  Maybe a new code, develop a flash game or maybe “get your creative on” a process that sucks right now, it’s totally up to you.  He claims 50% of Google’s innovations come from days like this, where their super geeks are able to let their mind run wild and not be confined by the cage of the everyday.

Next post will be about how this can be applied to a marketing company – agency, technology, advertiser or random guy tweeting allllll the time (uuuhhh… I didn’t mean me!?!?).  Stay tuned, feels like this framework fits well into our industry.  In the meantime, feel free to send across any ideas you may have.

– Brian Murphy

Comments

[Amy]

Amazing post

[Daniel Pink]

Thanks for the comments, Brian. Glad you liked that talk. As it happens, there's a book version that goes into far great detail and that offers some tools, tips, and advice. If you're interested, there's more info here: http://www.danpink.com/drive.

Cheers,
Dan Pink