Motivation is another way DG is better
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.
November 8th, 2010 at 3:16 am
Also fits with Gift Economics.
Gift economy based on Voluntary Employment and a Moneyless system of resource allocation.
Certainly gets money off the table.