Convene first interviewedDan Pink a year ago, just as his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, was about to be published. Since then, Drive has become a national bestseller, and Pink has been on the road, speaking at meetings and conferences across
the country, discussing the need to move beyond “Motivation 2.0.” That’s Pink’s termfor the systemof external rewards and punishments—carrots and sticks—that traditionally have been used to motivate people, especially in a work setting. In Drive, he argues that Motivation 2.0 is less effective in a decentralized, information-based economy, and that it’s time for Motivation 3.0, which is based on the idea that people are happier and more pro- ductive when they find autonomy, mastery, and purpose in their work; that is, when they’re encouraged to motivate themselves.
people are willing to not necessarily change their ways entirely but at least begin rethinking certain kinds of orthodoxy. I also think there’s some receptivity to this now, for two rea-
sons. One of them is the financial collapse and the still very creaky economy, one cause of which were some of these exter- nal “if/then” motivators run amuck. The other thing that’s inter- esting is, companies now have to do a lot more with a lot less. They might think that carrots are great motivators, but they don’t have a lot of carrots these days. [Laughs.] So they’re look- ing for other ways to foster the same motivation.
On_the_Web
Dan Pink will deliver a General Session presentation at PCMA 2011 Convening Leaders on Wednesday, Jan. 12. For more information about Drive: The Surprising Truth AboutWhat Motivates Us, visitwww.danpink.com/drive. Read Convene’s original interview with Dan Pink in our January 2010 issue, at www.pcma.org /Convene/Issue_Archives/January _2010.htm.
Is Drive intended only for people who are in management positions, or is it also relevant for rank-and-file employees? It’s both.To me, it’s hard to disentangle the two.Oneof the ways that organizations change is when the folks who actually do the work begin changing some of the things that they do. For instance, I’ve been advocating do-it-yourself performance reviews on the theory that mastery requires feedback that occurs more than once a year. People should be essentially taking their own performance reviews in hand and doing their own per- formance reviews. It’s very heartening—I get e-mail from readers saying, “I’m
going to give a copy of this book to my boss.” In some ways it equips readers with the argument and theknow-howtomakethe case for doing things a little bit differently to their boss. I like to think that it helps them sell some of thesenewpractices internally.
Next month, Pink—who also wrote the books Free Agent
Nation, A Whole NewMind, and The Adventures of Johnny Bunko—will deliver a General Session presentation atPCMA 2011 Convening Leaders. Recently we talked to himabouthow the economic crisis has made people more receptive to Drive’s message, why the workplace is so “feedback-impoverished,” and what meetings can do to leverage autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Do your audiences seem ready to embrace Motivation 3.0? I think so, although they’re ready only to the extent that you make the case. If you simply assert it, it does no good at all. Peo- ple are appropriately skeptical, but I think once you lay out the science and then not only show the findings but allow peo- ple to think about it and explain it themselves—then I think
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Has speaking about this over the last year led you to rethink anything you wrote in Drive? I would have written more—and I’ll probably do this in the paperback edition—about non-contingent external rewards as a very important form of feedback. Something like recognition for a job well done is a very important form of feedback and a motivator if it’s done in a non-contingent way that is actually pretty effective. That’s a point I really would have sharpened.
So these are external, Motivation 2.0 motivators working in a Motivation 3.0 kind of way? That’s exactly right. They’re operating in a 3.0 way rather than a 2.0 way. They’re not operating as a form of control. The con- tingencies—the if/then motivators—are a form of control, because I’mdangling something in front of you and I’messen- tially trying to guide and control your behavior. In the other case, your behavior is self-directed, and what I’mdoing, as a conse-