Leadership and Business Wisdom.

PositionDan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

Byline: S. Kamal Hayder Kazmi

Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

Dan Pink is the author of five books about business, work, and management that have sold two million copies worldwide. Dan Pink introduces 'The Candle Problem' - attaching a candle to a wall with a box of thumbtacks and matches to that it doesn't drip. 2 groups try to solve the problem - one is told they are timing to discover norms, while the other is given money if they are in the top 25 percent. This test consistently shows that the group being given money is 3minutes slower than the other. Other research over 40 years backs up the idea that for most tasks you can't incentivize people to perform better with money. This is one of the most robust findings from social science, but also the most ignored. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

Extrinsic motivators do however work well for '20th century tasks' - with manual work and simple solutions. The reward narrows their focus towards the answer, and pushes them to solve it quicker. But most modern professionals don't do this kind of work, they do much more complicated tasks with no easy answer. An MIT study found a similar result - for simple mechanistic tasks a reward improved their performance, but if they required ANY kind of cognitive function the higher reward decreased performance.

Modern psychology is leaning more towards intrinsic motivators - the desire to do more for personal reasons. In the business setting it revolves around

autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives

mastery - the urge to get better, or develop skills

and purpose - the need to do what we do for reasons bigger than ourselves.

Dan's talk focuses on autonomy. Management is an...

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