I heard Dan Pink’s TedTalk on ‘Motivation’ and took some notes that appear below. I also saw his very similar talk that was illustrated at RSA Animate [It's the third video clip from the top.] Pretty cool. Watch the “animated” one and check out some of the others on this same page. I have to find this artist and get a DG animate made!

The point is made that monetary incentives work for very simple tasks, but once someone is doing more complicated and creative tasks, their performance goes down when given more financial reward. He says, give people enough money to take that issue off the table and they’ll do well.

The three elements that Mr. Pink says are the building blocks of a new operating system for our businesses, autonomy, mastery, and purpose are built into DG. We tend to call them equivalence, continuous improving, and vision/mission/aim. That DG creates higher intrinsic motivation is well known.

My notes:

Extrinsic motivators work for simple, straightforward tasks. For anything else they slow people down. “Higher incentives led to worse performance.”
1) Extrinsic motivators only work in a surprisingly small band of circumstances.
2) If/then rewards often destroy creativity.
3) Secret to high performance is not extrinsic consequences, but intrinsic ones.

The building blocks of a new operating system for our businesses:
Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives.
Mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters.
Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in service of something that is bigger than ourselves.

Management is great for compliance, but not for self-direction. Get the money issue off the table, then give people autonomy.
ROWE – the Results-Only Work Environment.
We are purpose maximizers.

I am nearing the end of editing my 45 minute introductory DG video for the first North American sociocracy conference ‘The River Flows Both Ways - A New Era of Organizational Governance’ June 14-15, 2010 at Yukon College in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. At this point in my editing I am often waiting for the computer to render and to save clips as Quicktime files. So, during some of that time I am writing about some things that the video has brought up for me including the idea of ‘freedom.’
We tend to think of freedom as being free from being constricted, chained, and jailed, etc. We look at it as being able to do what we want, but there is a completely different way to look at freedom. Perhaps freedom should be thought of as how much influence do I have to affect the world around me? Whereas, in the old paradigm, we might say that my freedom to swing my arms ends at your nose. We probably wouldn’t say having an influence in the world around you should end at some limit. If others like your ideas and you strive to be a leader, then there might be no limit to your influence. Freedom, then, isn’t a question of limiting the negative aspects of others and increasing our own.
We also have to differentiate between power and freedom. Power is fairly clear. DG shows us that we can have an equivalent amount of power reserved for each participant in a system. When we use it we start seeing that all other systems don’t do that and we see how we give up power. For instance, when we consent to using majority vote, we are consenting to allow ourselves to be ignored if we are in the minority. When we agree to work somewhere, we are consenting to do what we are told, even if we don’t think it is the best course of action. Freedom is a little more murky, but related. Being free to do whatever I want, would be, to some extent, having power over the people around me. Instead, I want to be free to have influence over the important aspects of my life. I can do that with other people. I don’t need to have power over them.
I think the old way of looking at freedom comes from thinking of people as individuals instead of as groups. We can’t survive without each other so why only look at freedom in terms of only how it affects the individual? The old way also looks at actions as being negative and destructive, or ,at least, potentially so: swinging the arms for instance. If we are limited by DG’s ‘consent decision-making’ in what we do, we already have restricted our doings to those which no one objects to, which we can consider to be morally acceptable. How limited should our moral, positive behavior then be? It doesn’t make sense to think about it in this way.
If we have equal power reserved for us in the systems we use, then we will have the maximum amount of freedom possible. Our influence will only be limited by our own creativity and work ethic.

These are some notes I took from a TED lecture by Simon Sinek.
Three things are usually blamed for businesses failing: under capitalization, working with the wrong people, and/or bad market conditions. Really, not understanding your message to people is pretty big, though. People don’t buy ‘what’ you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it. Three concentric circles with “Why” in the middle, “How” next out, and “What” on the outer ring.
Why (Reptilian complex - vital bodily functions. Reliable, but somewhat rigid and compulsive.)
How (Limbic – feelings: trust, loyalty, all human behavior and decision-making, no language)
What (Neocortex – Rational, analytical thought, language )
It could be that Vision, Mission, and Aim are the same as Why, How, and What.
Vision – Why
Mission - How
Aim - What
TIVO (not doing well) said,”We have a product that does blahdeeblah.” They could have said, “If you’re the kind of person who wants total control over your life, we have something for you.”
King’s 1963 speech. He said what he believed, not what the audience should do. 250,000 people showed up. No one showed up for him. They showed up for themselves. It’s what they believed. It wasn’t the ‘I have a plan’ speech.
In advertising Apple Computers could say, “We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. Want to buy one?” Enh. This is how most marketing, and indeed most interpersonal communicating is done: What, How, not even getting to Why.
Apple actually says, “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” Why, How, then What.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
So, I’ve been trying to figure out the ‘why’ of DG. It seems to me that it is an opportunity to transform yourself, your life, your world for the better. Maybe something like, “We believe we have an opportunity to transform ourselves for the better. The way we do that is by practicing ‘power-with’ instead of ‘power-over/under’. We teach the method to do this. Want to buy one?” or “We believe it is important to fit in (or “belong”?) in society in a way that allows us to live by our values and principles…” etc.
Hmmmm. What do you think?