Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (book review)

Drive is a great read that promotes a fresh perspective on how to practice business in this new Millennium that is more humanistic while remaining profitable. The Drive philosophy is grounded in Motivation Theory and moves beyond the dated robotic focus on Rewards & Recognition, i.e. the “carrots & sticks” approach to human motivation, which Mr. Pink refers to as Motivation 2.0.

Before delving deeper into M2.0, Mr. Pink takes the time to outline the basic survival core that drove human evolution for many millennia, i.e. Motivation 1.0. The basics, of course, were and remain: food, shelter & procreation. These are the fundamental security concerns of every human being. These are our biological drives, but once they are secured, human nature begins to yearn for things beyond the basics.

For centuries, M2.0 and its extrinsic drives, was enough for humans to organize society, culture, defense and justice. For a large part of the world, M2.0 is still enough. It is what drives many organizations, employees & employers, in their daily structure. If you do a job, you expect to be fairly compensated for it. If a manager wants something more from their staff, they may dangle more benefits, i.e. carrots, such as cash and spa dates, in the hopes for a more concentrated effort. It’s a basic ROI principal to human behaviour, and it works both ways: If you want me to work harder, what’s in it for me? An extra day or two off at my discretion, perhaps?

All this M2.0 works well enough, but for many of us, we have begun to crave something deeper from our daily lives. Something that is intrinsic to our nature. We want Freedom - the freedom to choose how we work; where we work; when we work. We want to be free to be creative, to play, to have some fun every day on & off the job. Call this Motivation 3.0, based on the concept of a “third drive”, which is found in a lot of behavioural science theory outlined in the book

Our concept of how Kudos works dovetails nicely with M3.0, and I’ll explore the ideas developed by Mr. Pink in this book even further in future blog posts, including asking Mr. Pink for his feedback and expertise in some sort of interactive forum. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Drive and share it with his or her managers and co-workers

What do you think of some of the M3.0 concepts and/or business practices suggested in the book, such as “Fed-Ex Days”?

Looking forward to your comments!

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