In his best-selling book "Drive", science writer David H. Pink draws on more than half a century of research to explore the question of what motivates people and the extent to which this is taken into account in today's workplace.
Shockingly, most employers rely on extrinsic motivation, i.e., to increase their employees' work performance through external incentives. External incentives can be rewards, such as bonuses, but also punishments, such as pay cuts or job loss.
However, research shows that such incentives often have the opposite effect: Rewards can lead to narrowed focus, short-term thinking, and unethical behavior. Time and again, we hear about CEOs of public companies using accounting tricks to increase short-term stock market value just to secure their bonuses.
What actually drives people to peak performance in the long term is intrinsic motivation, which is based on the following three principles:
The author presents numerous examples where intrinsic motivation is far superior to extrinsic motivation: Wikipedia (compared to the Microsoft Encyclopedia discontinued in 2009), open-source software, and employee-initiated products, such as Post-Its and Gmail.
The scientific experiments and findings are presented entertainingly and easy-to-follow, making the book an enjoyable read.
Let's hope that numerous entrepreneurs will read it and create frameworks to spark more intrinsic motivation among their employees.
Most readers will probably find few surprising insights in this book; however, it can help better understand one's own motivation and see past or upcoming decisions more clearly.
🎧 Suitable as an audiobook? Yes.
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