The New Gospel of Motivation – Or Maybe Not

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening in to a webinar sponsored by the American Management Association (AMA) focused on the content in Dan Pink’s new book Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Now you faithful followers of this blog will recognize the name since I’ve posted a few times about Dan Pink and his position that incentives and rewards are bad for business.  Well – sorta.  

What I really posted about is how the twitterverse and the blogosphere took up that ort of information (yes ort is a word – you crossword puzzle fans know it) from  his TED presentation and ran with it like man on fire.

Soon a new gospel of motivation was born:

But There Are Other Verses

But like any information taken out of context it can have damaging affects.  And unfortunately, the content from Dan’s presentation on TED was separated from the context and then muddled and garbled as it passed from tin-can to tin-can along the strings of the interwebs.  There were blogs and tweets proclaiming the death of incentives and rewards.  

In fact the Herman Group (mgt. consultants and futurists) recently did their predictions for HR in 2010 and their #9 prediction:

Some Employers will eliminate Reward Programs

Misunderstanding Dan Pink’s new book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us”, some employers will abolish their reward programs altogether. This ill-advised shift will cause significant, negative, unintended consequences.

But as usual, the reality is a bit different.  There are other verses to the new motivation gospel.

The Real Greatest Story

After listening to Dan’s presentation yesterday I can tell you this – he does NOT believe incentives are the tools of the Devil.  He does believe that incentives have their place – along with other reward types such as recognition.  He does believe that Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose have more impact for creative, innovative and team-based applications.  

In other words – he believes the same stuff I do… and the same stuff I’ve been saying all along.

Check out the post I did on Dan Pink’s point of view when it came out here.

The point I made then, and the point Dan makes, is that there are different things that motivate different people for different tasks.  

Again – no holy grail of motivation.  No “EASY” way out guys and gals.  Sorry.

Marketing Smarts He’s Got

I got to give Dan props.  He is a marketing guy at heart and has done a great job of marketing his point of view.  I’m envious.  Some examples:

• He talks of Motivation 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 (who doesn’t love a techy approach today!)
• He has great categories for awards/rewards:
  - Baseline (compensation/benefits – I might argue this at a later date)
  - If-then (traditional conditional incentives – sell “x” get “y”)
  - Now-that (recognition – after something is done well give award/praise/etc.)
• Under the Autonomy category he highlights four things that make up autonomy:
  - Task (what I do)
  - Time (when I do it)
  - Technique (how I do it)
  - Team (who I choose to do it with)

Who doesn’t love a great mnemonic!  Mega-props Dan!

Got Mine Coming

I have my copy of Drive coming and I’m anxiously awaiting it so I can do a real review of his concepts.  I like where he’s taking this.  

However, what I don’t like is how others are taking his concepts for a ride.