Drive by Daniel H. Pink a book about why people work and motivation
Why do write for a blog when I know how few people are reading it? Why do some people enjoy going to work while others don’t? Why is it that the bonus that the manager at your work gets makes him worse at his job? Drive: the Surprising Truth about What Motivates us by Daniel H. Pink seeks to answer a lot of these questions by pointing out the reasons we do things isn’t as black and white as it might seem.
At its heart, the premise of “Drive” by Daniel H. Pink is fairly simple. Economics in general works on a carrot and stick approach, and in most cases both carrot and stick are money. But he believes there are other motivating factors, and often the attempt to use a carrot and stick approach not only does not help but hurts productivity. It’s a pretty basic idea that meshes well with the things that I have seen in my own work experience. Like the aforementioned boss, who became far worse at his job because he was focused on his bonuses rather than simply improving the situation for everyone.
According to Daniel, the science is quite clear. Things like autonomy, purpose and mastery are all major motivators for people and businesses who take advantage of that can have happier workers without changing the workload. The easiest example is that of is ROW. That is the results oriented work environment. The idea is to assign work to people, then so long as they finish what you need you don’t track how long they take or how they do it. People can show up to work when they want, or work from home. They can wear a tie or a t-shirt because who cares so long as their work is done to the standard you want. It seems blatantly obvious to me that in workplaces where this can be done it would make things much more pleasant for everyone.
The book explains the theory well and spends the second half of the book explaining how to use the ideas. It goes into depth on things like flow, deliberate practice and mastery and giving a large list of other books and resources that go into more depth on many of those subjects and I plan to get to in the future.
One thing that has most convinced me of the ROW and autonomy driven work environment is that it has come to a type of work that I thought was impossible. I spent years delivering food and if you would have asked me if it was possible to design a system where people showed up to work when they felt like it, wore what they wanted and didn’t take deliveries if they didn’t want to I would have said you were insane. You would have the wrong amount of people all the time and food would sit waiting for hours. You likely realized I just described Door Dash and the other food delivery services. And while those still have some kinks to work out in how they treat their people, it proved to me that with enough creativity you can change almost any system.
This is the second of Daniel H. Pink’s books that I have read. I also read When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. It won’t be the last. I know that not everyone needs or wants to read several hundred pages on motivation, but for me it not only makes me a better person who writes more, but it makes be a better writer both by showing me a clearer picture of how people think, but by showing me how other people actually live so that I can make my characters more real.