Review/Recap of Daniel Pink’s, Drive by Monique Lemus- Sr. Media Strategist, The Media Kitchen/KBS+P

Recap
Throughout Drive, Pink uses history, psychology experiments and real life, modern workplace examples to push the reader to rethink the way we motivate each other and ourselves. He uses the psychology claim that humans are not only driven by survival (hunger, thirst, procreation) and rewards and punishments as originally thought, but also by an intrinsic motivation; or more so, the desire for a sense of purpose and self-satisfaction. The past changes in industry- like the diversion from routine, left-brain tasks- and overall society, have allowed this third drive to prevail as the new way to motivate and push for success. Drive dives into the ways we can make these changes and officially convert the world into a “Motivation 3.0” world.

Pink first begins his discussion by discounting the traditional rewards and punishments method that’s dominated society for the past century or so. While he agrees that rewards and punishments serve as strong motivators for routine tasks, such as stuffing envelopes, in most cases, this system actually stunts creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and overall innovation. People get too caught up on finishing a task in hopes of a reward or to avoid punishment, so much so that they loose sight of the goal and only focus on the unrelated extrinsic outcome. Pink believes that in order for companies and society to become more successful, we need to step away from our traditional modes of motivation for achievement, and instead, mold a new worker and work environment that feeds human’s intrinsic drive.

This new worker is called a Type I. Traditionally, workplaces have pushed people to be Type X workers- meaning, extrinsically driven employees, who work only for external outcomes like raises, sales, bonuses, promotions, etc. Alternatively, Type I workers are driven by intrinsic factors such as self-fulfillment, knowledge, enduring accomplishments, etc, on top of the traditional extrinsic motivators. Pink highlights the important, and honest fact, that these new type of workers still need extrinsic rewards- like raises, competitive pay, etc- but the real driver of strong performance and innovative thinking comes from a sense of purpose in their duties.


So how do we mold these workers and make our companies and work environments more productive? That’s the question Pink expected, and luckily explains in the last half of the book.
Essentially, Type I workers can be created by providing them with work environments that allow them to be self directed, expand their abilities and most importantly, live a life of purpose:

• Allowing workers to be self directed means providing them with autonomy and allowing workers to work they way they want to work- on their own schedules, in their own methods, etc. Google adheres to this sort of management and apparently it was during these “free play/work” periods, when workers were just fooling around with peers, that some of the most innovative Google products- like Gmail and G-Chat- came about.

• Work environments should also provide employees with room to grow and achieve mastery of their duties or become better at something that matters. In order for this to happen employees need to be engaged with their work, feel challenged to the extent of their ability and be pushed to work hard (but not too sternly). The beauty behind this concept is it keeps on working- mastery always appears attainable if workers have clear goals, objectives and examples, but at the same time, mastery is never attainable (like an asymptote- think back to high school math!)- workers will always work towards mastery and thereby constantly evolve! Pink suggests that employers conduct more frequent one-on-one reviews with employees, in order to assure that workers feel challenged and fully engaged- this should help lead workers towards mastery.

• Finally, companies and employers need to give their workers a sense of purpose. Without this, autonomy and mastery can’t flourish. Managers can help instill a sense of purpose in their employees by tying in companies’ profits with larger scope, more intrinsic goals, creating a company environment where workers consider themselves part of the overall objective- we vs. them idea- and, finally, involving employees in policy making decisions. Some ideas that Pink suggests to achieve this include: tying profits into a charitable goal, like TOMS shoe brand (every time a customer buys a pair of shoes, the company donates a pair to a child in Africa) or giving employees outlets to help others/do things that promote intrinsic motivation on behalf of the company.

Analysis/Review

Overall, Pink proves his point and delivers a persuasive, yet idealistic, argument for the new sort of motivation. Turning all employees at worldwide, enormous corporations like Coco-Cola or P&G, into Type I workers would be extremely difficult and nearly impossible. These companies are too large and have too many routine oriented positions (packaging, factory lines, etc) to fully embrace this workplace revolution any time soon- that’s not to say that their management can’t stand to incorporate portions of Pink’s message into their companies.

Lucky for us at KBS+P, we are just big enough to be able to take on most of Pink’s ideas. Majority of our book club discussion focused around what we’re currently doing at The Media Kitchen and KBS+P to create a Type I work environment- perhaps the agency work model naturally lends itself towards this sort of work ethic, but many of Pink’s ideas are already integrated into our work environment (or recently have been...perhaps someone in management just read this!):

- We are reminded to do things that matter, which taps into the “purpose” side of things
- We are allowed to mold our days the way we wish as long as we’re still delivering and adhering to all our clients’ requests (like watching World Cup games in the Test Kitchen as long as we keep up with work)
- We’ve even been given the opportunity to speak to management about ways we’d like to change the company
- We’re even getting driven to help our clients’ businesses grow (intrinsic drive), by gaining financial rewards (extrinsic reward) from their profits via the KBS+P stock index.

Maybe Pink can use our agency as an example in his next book- until then, everyone at KBS+P and MDC can continue to follow his mode of thinking and hopefully reap the rewards of his insight into this new form of motivation.