This months Asentiv book club review was Drive, the surprising truth of what motivates us by Daniel Pink.
Well that was an interesting read! Its quite humorous that a book about motivation was one we struggled to finish! Now let’s get one thing straight from the start. We all agreed there is some great information and tips around the power of motivation. Our challenge was more around the the amount of examples and time it took to get to the real nuggets of information.
Challenges we had with the book included “overcomplicated language” “”out of date” (well is was written in 2009 so we are a bit behind!) “Difficult read and it read like a manifesto”
So thats that stuff out of the way. What did we like?
Things like Google for example giving staff 20% time. This is time once a quarter that the team can work on any project they want. Something that motivates them personally (intrinsic) something that excites. Gmail is a successful example of 20% time.
One of the benefits of these type of days is they allow creativity to flow. Pink explains how carrot and stick motivation (extrinsic motivation) inhibits the creative process of our brains. Carrot and stick motivation works best for left brained simple process driven tasks. This is because they are often a series of easy to follow repetitive steps taken to reach an outcome.
Once an extrinsic motivator is added to a creative task however it has a negative impact on the quality of the work done. This is because most creative (right brained) activity benefits when the person doing the activity is a state of flow. In other words doing the task purely for the pleasure of doing the task. When this extrinsic motivator is added it negatively affects the intrinsic motivation required for the right brained creative to enter the flow state needed for optimum performance.
Other tips we liked included Pinks Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose framework for motivation. This was my favourite part of the book.
Giving people autonomy of four key areas of their work experience that Pink identified as Task, Time, Team, Technique is key to supporting intrinsic motivation for employees.
Having employees who are driven to gain mastery of a task is also important. These employees are constantly looking to be the best they can be and less likely to be demotivated after achieving a result. They are driven to be better next time.
Finally having employees engaged and connected to the purpose of the organisation will drive intrinsic motivation as employees have a feeling of a common goal, a common purpose, a shared reason they are making a difference.
There you have it! The Asentiv book clubs review of “Drive” by Daniel Pink. Despite only scoring 4.5 out of 10 (mainly because we found it a difficult listen/read) we all got some great information and learning from the book.
We would definitely recommend it just be prepared for it!
If you’d like more information on our monthly Asentiv book club meetings then drop me a line on davev@asentiv.com