My friend, Pascoe Sawyers, www.mylifeismybusiness.co.uk (check out his website – he has a great book out and there is a video clip of him live) sent me recently a link to Dan Pink’s talk at Oxford on motivation: www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
In eighteen minutes Dan puts in a tremendous performance, and covers a lot of ground. The essence of his argument is one that we here at Motivational Maps passionately agree with: business does not deploy the real science of motivation when dealing with staff; business (including non-business organisations) tends to use a limited carrot and stick approach that only works in a narrow set of circumstances. Put even more forcefully, Dan argues that the ‘If …[you do this] … Then … [you get that]’ model destroys creativity. In fact, ‘If… then’ only works when dealing with simple and simplistic types of activities – certainly not anything requiring innovation and creativity. And the point he goes on to make is: we in the West need to be creative if we are going to compete with the East.
Dan cites a lot of scientific evidence for his assertions and these are pretty compelling. But perhaps his most telling point comes at the end: he asks us to compare and contrast two products – Encarta and Wikipedia. If you were to ask in the late 90s which one would come to dominate the market – the one product with all of Microsoft’s R&D behind it, and a whole lot of highly paid managers and professionals, and marketing experts versus a self-help product produced by amateurs and ‘nerds’, who would you bet on?
The counter-intuitive fact is: Wikipedia won, and an essential part of this winning is down to motivation – they were/are a highly motivated team of people bent on a mission, versus a bunch of professionals doing a job, earning a living, expecting a pay cheque. Big sub-text: big pay cheques don’t work. And isn’t this so timely a point with all the banking stuff going around? The whole rationale of why they are being paid so much money is entirely false.
Dan goes on to say that that the money motivators – extrinsic motivators – are weak compared with what he calls the intrinsic motivators. He identifies three core intrinsic motivators: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
At Motivational Maps we are gratified that there are three – our system is built on nine motivators in three blocks of three! And we have a special language for Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose: we call them the Spirit, the Expert and the Searcher.
For those people who want the latest ‘science’ on motivation – what really motivates people, and who want a language and a metric so that we don’t get into the touchy-feely, impressionistic clap-trap, then Motivational Maps really are the solution – and if you don’t believe me, at least take a look at Dan Pink’s video – it’s inspiring!
James
The Mapping Motivation Series 