Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

http://www.ted.com Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

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22 Comments on “Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation”

  1. WHAT MOTIVATES YOU AT WORK? or HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES?
    Watch Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation

    Did you know that financial rewards in a company can deliver opposite results such as block thinking and reduce productivty?

    If you do this, then you get that only works for some circumstances!
    Quite often they do HARM!

    There is a mismatch what science knows and what business knows.

    Rewards by their very nature narrow our focus… Concentrate the mind and it many cases it does work but for some cases you cannot achieve a goal with a narrow focus.

    "As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance."

    But once the task called for "even ruimentary cognitive skill," a larger reard "led to poorer performance."

    "In eight of the nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance."
    Ref.: D. Ariely, U. Gneezy, G. Lowenstein, & N. Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper Np. 05-11, July 2005; NY Times, 20 Nov. 08

    "We find that financial incentives… can result in a negative impact on overall performance."
    Dr. Bernd Irlenbusch, London School of Economics
     
    3 Elements building blocks businesses need to take into consideration:
    AUTONOMY: The urge to direct our own lives.
    MASTERY: The desire to get better at something that matters.
    PURPOSE: The yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves

    Building blocks of a new operating system for businesses – by Dan Pink.

    20% of time to work on whatever you like
    ROWE

    Intrinsic motivators vs. Extrinsic motivators.
    Intrinsic motivation is defined as performing an action or behavior because you enjoy the activity itself. Whereas acting on extrinsic motivation is done for the sake of some external outcome, the inspiration for acting on intrinsic motivation can be found in the action itself.

    #Motivation   #Work  

  2. Considering our discussion on the need for creativity and motivation, I found this video clip from Daniel Pink. Amazing!

  3. A fascinating topic (admittedly like most TED talks)… I feel that the concept would apply really well to fitness, another major problem of our time.  When you eat well and exercise for an extrinsic reward, losing twenty pounds, getting abs, fitting in a couple sizes smaller, its easy to lose interest, to get discouraged, to stop.  When the reward becomes intrinsic, when you enjoy exercise, and when eating well becomes a habit you prefer to eating like crap, then consistency – and results – come a lot easier.  A pet theory on my part but it makes sense to me.

  4. That's not surprising at all. I knew that the 'if…, then …" motivation doesn't work when I was a teenager just from life experience.

  5. Education in the US suffers from this exact case!

    Teachers for example are given benefits for a better class performances, which doesn't do any good since the a lot of teachers either cheat and mess up the education of innocent children.

    Watch Jon Oliver's LastWeekTonight on that topic on YouTube. It's really worth it.

  6. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

  7. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

  8. Valve and Bethesda wants to sell people's MODs, and based on the video this is why it DOESN'T work.

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