Recent Stories with tag autonomy

Daniel Pink visits Town Hall in Seattle on Monday, January 11. His talk begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5.

Of the pack of gurus in the running to assume the mantle of Drucker and become the business world's go-to guy for advice on how to have it all, the author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink, both is and isn't in the running.

It's hard to imagine anyone today having the chance to survey a monolithic business world the way Peter Drucker did. Today's analyses are either fiercely domain-specific or meta-analyses of a fractured, niche marketplace. Nonetheless, Daniel Pink books--for "intelligent, forward-thinking, optimistic folks," bursting with the hallmarks of the get-smart genre--sell like iPods (which I think supplanted hotcakes in sales rankings some years ago).

Drive naturally comes with an extended subhead ("The Surprising Truth ABout What Motivates Us") and includes seven reasons for things, invented dichotomies ("Type I's almost always outperform Type X's in the long run"), recourse to experts and research, and glowing case studies of businesses that "get it."

In other words, Drive is to books what the Clif Bar is to food. If, like me, you find your soul's tastebuds shriveling from over-exposure to this high-energy presentation style, I want to deliver some surprising truth of my own: It's worth reading, and mulling over. It challenges you. (If hard-charging execs did book clubs, this would be a good pick.) And it's not "just" for business types--if you need to work for a living, there's something here for you.

Let me skip to the end, to explain why. According to Pink (the author, not the singer), motivation is what happens when autonomy, mastery, and purpose head off in the same direction. That's drive.

He's arguing for real autonomy here, not the faux kind where corporate sets goals and workers have the "freedom" to achieve them by working as long as they want so long as it's longer. The example he gives is of a ROWE (results-oriented work environment), where employees set their own hours--they come to work to work, not to show up at the office for 8.5 hours.

On the one hand, I resist the book jacket's "paradigm-shattering" emphasis, but on the other, just imagine what it would take to get your office to switch to ROWE. Many, if not most, of you are all too familiar with how suspicious command-and-control types are of giving employees meaningful choices. They may mean well, but they just can't get their heads around it. Their mantra is "Work harder, not smarter."

Fundamentally, they believe people don't like work, and would rather be someplace else: Only rum and the lash motivate the swabbies. But the thesis that underlies Pink's book is that in many cases, extrinsic motivators are only briefly effective, and are often counter-productive for the long-term. The thrill of a Salesperson of the Month plaque dwindles quickly. And if it's all about the extra money from a raise, why not take bids from competing firms for your services?...

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