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The Puzzle of Motivation- Dan Pink

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I need to make a confession at the outset here little over 20 years ago I did some that I regret  something that I'm not particularly proud of something that in many ways I wish no one would ever know but that here I feel obliged to reveal the late 1980s in a moment of youthful indiscretion Law School  America laws of professional degree you get your University degree can you go on to law school I didn't do very well  put it mildly I can do very well in fact graduated in the part of my class that made the top 90% possible Enderman I never practice law a day in my life I pretty much wasn't allowed to  but you play against my better judgement against the advice of my own wife I want to try to dust off some of those legal skills what's what does legal scales I want to make a case  I want to make a hard-headed evidence dare I say lawyer Lee case for rethinking how we run our businesses  so ladies and gentlemen of the jury take a look at this this is called a candle problem some of you might have seen this before it's created in 1945 by a psychologist and Carl junker Carl Jung created this experiment that's used in a whole variety of experiments in Behavioral Science and here's how it works I bring you into a room I give you a candle some thumbtacks and some matches and I say to you your job is to attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto table now what would you do many people begin trying to Thumbtack the candle to the wall doesn't work somebody some people and I saw somebody make the motion over here some people have a great idea where they light the match melt the side of the candle try to adhere it to the wall awesome idea doesn't work eventually after five or ten minutes most people figure out the solution would you can see here the key is to overcome what's called functional fixedness you look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the text but it can also have this other function as a platform for the candle candle prop now I want to tell you about an experiment using the candle problem done by a scientist Named Sam glucksberg who's now at Princeton University in the US this shows power of incentives here's what he did he gathered his participants in he said I'm going to time you how quickly you can solve this problem to one group he said what time you to establish Norms averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem to the second group he offered rewards he said if you're in the top 25% of the fastest times  you get $5  if you're the fastest and everyone we're testing here today you $20 it's a decent sum of money for a few minutes of work question faster did this group solve the problem  dancer it took them on average three and a half minutes longer three and a half minutes long this makes no sense right I mean I'm an American I believe in free markets that's not how it's supposed to work right if you want people to perform better you reward them right bonuses commissions their own reality show incentivize them that's how business works but that's not happening here you've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and and accelerate creativity and it does the opposite thinking and blocks creativity and what interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration this has been replicated over and over and over again for nearly 40 years these contingent motivators if you do this then you get that work in some circumstances but for a lot of tasks they actually either don't work or often they do harm  this is one of the most robust turn things in social science  it also one of the most ignored  I spent the last couple of years looking at the science of human motivation particularly the guy types of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators and I'm telling it's not even close if you look at the science there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does and what's alarm in here is that our business operating system think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses how we motivate people how we apply are human resources  it's built entirely around these extrinsic motivators around carrots and sticks that's actually fine for many 20th century tasks but for 21st century task that Megan istic reward and Punishment approach doesn't work often does more often does harm let me show you what I mean so glucksberg did another experiment similar to this where he presented the problem in a slightly different way like this up here text tactical to the walls to the wac doesn't drip onto the table same deal you were timing for Norms you were incentivizing what happened this this time the incentivize group kicked the other groups but why who won the tax are out of the box it's pretty easy isn't it if then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks where there's a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to rewards by their very nature Focus concentrate that's why they working so many cases and so forth like this I've narrowed Focus will you just see the goal right there Zoom stray add to it they work really well but for the real candle problem you don't want to be looking like this solutions not over here this is lucian's on the periphery you want to be looking around that wrote that reward actually Narrows our focus and restricts a possibility let me tell you why this is so important  in Western Europe in many parts of Asia in North America in Australia white collar workers are doing less of this kind of work and more of this Network  set routine rule-based left brain work certain kinds of accounting certain kinds of financial analysis certain kinds of computer programming has I'm fairly easy to Outsource fairly easy to automate software can do it faster low-cost providers around the world can do it cheaper so what really matters are the more right-brain creative conceptual kinds of abilities think about your own work think about your own are the problems that you face or even the problems we've been talking about here are those kinds of problems they have a clear set of rules and a single solution know the rules are mystifying the solution if it exists at all is surprising and not obvious everybody in this room is dealing with their own version of the candle problem and for candle problems of any kind in any field those Zen Rewards  the things around which we built so many of our businesses don't in this is not here's the thing this is not a Feeling okay I'm a lawyer I don't believe in feelings a philosophy I'm an American I don't believe in philosophy this is a or as we say in my hometown of Washington DC a true fact let me let me give you an example of what I mean let me Marshall the evidence here cuz I'm not telling you a story on making a case ladies and gentlemen of the jury some evidence Dan really one of the great Economist of our time he and three colleagues did a study some MIT students they gave these MIT students a bunch of games games that involved in motor skills in concentration and they offered them for performance three levels of rewards small reward medium reward large Skype you really really get the large reward on down what happened as long as the task involved only mechanical skill blower is work as they would be expected the higher the pay the better the performance but once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill a larger reward lead to poor performance then they said okay let's see if there's any cultural by let's go to Monterey Indian testdisk rewards standard of living is lower in in Monterey of award that's modest by North American Standards is more meaningful there same deal a bunch of games three levels of rewards what happens  people offered the medium level of Rewards did No Better Than People offer the all rewards but this time people offer the highest Rewards  50 worst of all  innate night as We examined across three experiment higher incentives lead to worse performance  is this some kind of touchy daily socialist conspiracy going on here no these are Economist from MIT from Carnegie Mellon from the University of Chicago and you know sponsor search the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States that's the American Experience let's go across the pond to the London School economics lse London School of Economics alma mater of 11 Nobel Laureate in economics training ground for great economic thinkers like George Soros and Friedrich Hayek and Mick Jagger last month  just last month Economist at LSC add 51 studies a pay-for-performance plans inside of companies here's what the economist there said  the find that Financial incentives can result in a negative impact an overall performance  there's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does and what worries me as we I'm here in the rubble of the economic class is it to many organizations are making their decision there's their policies about talent and people it's not assumptions that are outdated unexamined and rude and More in folklore than in science and if we really want to are this economic mess and if you really want high performance on those definitional task of the twenty-first century the solution is not to do more of the warm things to entice people with a sweeter carrot or threaten them with a sharper stick we needed him to approach the good news about all this is at the going to something study motivation have given us this new approach it's an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation around the desire to do things cuz they matter cuz we'd like it cuz there interesting quiz are part of something important into my mind that new operating system for a business's revolves around three elements autonomy mastery purpose autonomy the urge to director OnLive Mastery the desire to get better and better at something that matters and purpose the Y to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves these are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for a businesses I want to talk tell me about autonomy  20% in 20th century we came up with this idea of management management did not emanate from nature get management isn't in it's like you're not a tree it's a television set okay somebody invented it and it doesn't mean it's going to work forever management is great traditional Notions of manage are great if you want compliance but if you want engagement self-direction works better let me give you some examples of some kind of radical Notions of self Direction what this means you see you don't see a lot of it but you see the first stirrings of something really interesting going on because what it means it means paying people adequately in Fairly absolutely the issue of money off the table and then giving people lots of autonomy let me give you some examples how many of you have heard of the company atlassian looks like less than half is an Australian software company and they do something incredibly cool what time is the year they tell their engineer's go for the next 24 hours and work on anything you want as long as it's not part of your regular job we're going to anything you want so the engineers use this time to come up with a cool patch of code to come up with an elegant hack then they present all of these stuff that they develop to their teammates to the what's the company in this wild and wooly all-hands meeting at the end of the day and then being Australians everybody has a beer hey call them FedEx days why  could you have to deliver something overnight  it's pretty it's not bad it's a trademark violation pretty clever that one day of intense autonomy has produced a whole array of software fixes that might never have existed and it's worked so well that it lasting is taking it to the next level with 20 what time done famously add Google where engineer's can work spend 20% of their time working on anything they want they have autonomy over their time their task their team technique radical amounts of autonomy and at Google as most of as many of you know about half of the new products in a typical year are burst during 20% X like Gmail Orchid Google News let me give you an even more radical example of it something called the results only work environment created by two American consultants in place at about a dozen companies around North America in a row people don't have schedules they show up when they want they don't have to be in the office at a certain time or anytime they just have to get their work done how they do it when they do it are they do it is totally up to them meetings in these kinds of environments or optional what happens almost across the board productivity goes up worker engagement goes up worker satisfaction goes up turnover goes down on ameet mastering purpose these are the building maps of a new way of doing things look at this and say that sounds nice but it's utopian and I say nuke I proof  the mid-1990s Microsoft started as an encyclopedia called and Carta they deployed all the right incentives all the right incentives they need professional to write netted thousands of Articles well compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time few years later another encyclopedia get started different model right  do it for fun no one gets paid a cent or a Euro or a yen do it because you like to do it now if you just ten years ago if you would going to an economist anywhere and said hey I got these two different models for create encyclopedia who would win  10 years ago you could not have found a single sober Economist anywhere on planet Earth who would have predicted the Wikipedia model this is the Titanic battle between these two approaches this is the Ali Frazier of motivation right this is the Thrilla in intrinsic motivators versus extrinsic motivators autonomy Mastery purpose carrots and sticks and who wins intrinsic motivation autonomy mastery purpose in a knockout let me wrap up  is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does and here's what science knows one does 20th century ward those motivators we think are the natural part of business do work but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances to those if rewards off and Destroy creativity 3 The Secret of high performance isn't rewards and punishments but that unseen intrinsic Drive the drive to do things for your own sake the drive to do things cuz they matter and here's the best part here's the best part we already know this the science confirms what we know in our hearts so if we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does if we bring our motivation notion to motivation into the 21st century if we get past this crazy dangerous ideology of carrots and sticks we can strengthen our businesses we can solve a lot of this candle problems and maybe maybe maybe we can change the world I rest my case

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The Puzzle of Motivation- Dan Pink

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