Name: Vojtech's review of Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Item: Drive
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Daniel H. Pink

The author of the best-selling A Whole New Mind challenges popular misconceptions to reveal what actually motivates people and how to harness that knowledge to promote personal and professional fulfillment.

The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us

Drive

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people - at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does - and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In DRIVE, he reveals the three elements of true motivation: AUTONOMY - the desire to direct our own lives; MASTERY - the urge to get better and better at something that matters; PURPOSE - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward. DRIVE is bursting with big ideas - the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Vojtech

Nast Marrero

Drive is an insightful book about how organizations deal with engagement, motivation and talent management. It lays down the foundations to review most polices related to compensation, and performance. 

It shares some interesting examples and practices to apply the principles in the day to day management, yet there are many topics that practitioners shall develop for a full seizing of this disruptive view on Human motivation.

Maxwel Quintão

** spoiler alert **
           DRIVE é uma aventura pela ciência da motivação. E a primeira ideia com que ficamos, e isto é muito claro, é que as empresas trabalham a motivação de uma forma completamente errada. Tudo o que fazem vai contra aquilo que a ciência/psicologia comportamental sabe e aconselha. E isto para mim é o mais grave: usar o senso comum quando há conhecimento científico. 

Aquilo que mais me chamou a atenção é a crítica que é feita ao atual modelo de gestão que temos nas organizações. Um modelo a que o autor chama de Motivação 2.0 (a Motivação 1.0 é a biológica, aquilo que nos faz mover quando temos de satisfazer necessidades biológicas) ou Modelo de Gestão Científica: se durante o horário de trabalho os colaboradores seguirem os passos todos e fizerem tudo no tempo certo, teremos uma maior produtividade e um maior retorno económico. Prémios são dados se houver superação de objetivos e castigos são aplicados se o trabalho não for feito como deve de ser. E parece que faz sentido. Certo? 

Só que este modelo surgiu na década de 1900. Numa altura em que a maioria dos trabalhadores eram operários fabris, em que o trabalho consistia em “Tarefas Algorítmicas”: tarefas mecanizadas e rotineiras. Mas esta não é a realidade nos dias de hoje, uma realidade dominada por trabalhos com “Tarefas Heurísticas”: procedimento mental que ajuda a encontrar respostas adequadas para perguntas difíceis. São processos em que não há rotinas ou mecanização de tarefas (apesar de haver boas práticas). E que não é possível programar para estar em modo turbo durante as 8h de trabalho. Há simplesmente pessoas e a sua capacidade de raciocínio. E isto é especialmente verdade quando falamos de pessoas que trabalham em áreas ligadas ao empreendedorismo, gestão, marketing, criatividade… É preciso de um novo modelo, um modelo de Motivação 3.0: 

- um modelo que ofereça AUTONOMIA (diferente de indecência e individualismo) porque a autonomia aumenta bem-estar e a produtividade e melhora, em muito, a atitude; 
- um modelo que incentive à MESTRIA, no sentido de deixarem as pessoas explorarem novos caminhos e novas formas fazer as coisas; 
- um modelo com PROPÓSITO nas tarefas e nos objetivos porque a espécie humana é naturalmente “purpose seekers”. 

A Motivação 3.0 é um modelo holístico que incentiva e que trabalha a motivação intrínseca. 

E eu concordo. 
O modelo de 8h de trabalho, das 9h00 às 18h00, foi inventado e demonstrou eficácia numa altura de elevada industrialização. O mote work harder fazia sentido nesta altura: mais horas a produzir produtos, mais produtos eram produzidos. Nos dias de hoje, em que trabalhamos com o raciocínio, é preciso um modelo work smarter. Com a motivação certa conseguimos elevados níveis de produtividade com menos horas de trabalho. Exemplo disso foi o teste que a Islândia fez, em que reduziu a semana de trabalho para 4 dias e com excelentes resultados. 

Para fechar, work smarter. Not harder.

the surprising truth about what motivates us

Arturo Hernández

Carrots and sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Nelson Zagalo

A minha análise: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...

Raúl Barroso Moreno

Even though science tells us that we should operate as individuals or as organizations differently than we normally do, we stick to an “if-then” reward-model. This book encourages you to take a new approach built around intrinsic motivation which pillars are “Autonomy” - the desire to direct our own lives; “Mastery” - the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters; and “Purpose” - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

Kuba Milcarz

Didn’t learn anything. This books does not contribute to our knowledge of motivation. No new or innovative discoveries. Talks about finding purpose and autonomy in motivation because that helps us truly be motivated. No shit Sherlock.

Dana Kraft

Excellent read. Concise and convincing. I appreciate that in addition to outlining a different method/source of motivation for people, he also describes when it should and shouldn't be more effective.

Eloise

To quickly summarise Pink's argument in the book, he believes that the idea that humans are predominantly motivated to do things, such as better their performance at work, through the promise of a reward (motivation 2.0), is outdated. Instead, there is new evidence for a third and most effective motivation (motivation 3.0) which is the fulfilment and enjoyment we get out of doing something. Rewards may draw us to perform certain tasks, but it is the true enjoyment of said tasks that gets them done well. Thus, for instance, in a work environment employers shouldn't just look to bribe their employees into working hard, they should make the job more enjoyable as well.

Personally, the themes with in this book would not typically draw my attention within psychology. However, I found Pink's clever way of using examples from multiple scenarios where the third drive could be used, such as in exercise or education, to be an amazing way of helping the reader to understand his ideas. Additionally, the chapter summaries towards the end of the book are a great way to help the reader refresh the most important ideas of the book - they are also useful when a chapter appeared more complex. Then, finally, the engage the reader he lists a bunch of questions regarding your experience of reading the material and your thoughts on his ideas which is good for those who are perhaps researching his work or are looking to go beyond the material within the book.

Overall, Pink does an excellent job of persuading the reader that the third drive is very real, and very important. I am not surprised that his work has had so much success as he has already influenced the attitudes of employers, and also makes his book accessible to those who perhaps take less interest or have less of a grasp on the topic.

Sonja H

Nichts wirklich Neues, eine Auflistung und Kommentierung diverser Studien und Erkenntnisse anderer Autoren, dazu viele Referenzen und am Ende Fragen für eine Lesegruppe. Ohne all das wäre wohl nicht viel vom Buch übriggeblieben. Muss man nicht lesen.

Rachel Kwon

Interesting (especially the early section about rewards), but probably could have just been a long-form essay.

Amanda Kordeliski

The topic of what motivates people is fascinating to me. My only complaint about this book is that it only half as long as it appears to be. The last half of the book is previews for other books :(

ANDREW BRYK

Short yet fascinating read. I really enjoyed all of the psychological aspects of the book, particularly the chapters and anecdotes that discussed achieving a flow state in life, something which I continue to strive for

Maria

this is a "point of reference" book for understanding the motivation. not groundbreaking if you read Dweck and Csikszentmihalyi but a right place to start. a must read for basically everyone.

Lance Willett

I enjoyed this look at motivation at the topics tie into other books I've enjoyed about mastery and thinking. The main idea is to find happiness and a good fit at work by encouraging autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We should be motivated by things other than external "carrot and stick" rewards (like getting paid to do repetitive, routine tasks — and calling it a day).

One thing that hit home for me is when Pink mentions that if you are not doing creative, right-brain (slow, R-mode) thinking in your job — you won't be doing it for long. It's this type of thinking that brings value to the modern workplace.

Intrinsic motivations, something with a purpose, that you can get better at and master, and I'd add — this visibly and importantly *help people.* That's the purpose of what I do (writing and testing software).

I loved: Mastery can be alluring and frustrating at the same time. Life-long quest; no "bored" or retiring at age 50 for me.

Christian Beck

This isn’t a bad book but I rated it low because it’s based on compelling and insightful the book is when I read it. I’m a fan of Dan Pink but his books have to be read within a year of being published. Like his other books, this is a great overview of intrinsic motivation, something that was in vogue around 2010. But the examples he uses are overly simplistic and some are flat out incorrect. His review of Wikipedia vs Encarta illustrates an overstep. He positions it as a success of intrinsically motivated authors vs. extrinsically motivated ones. But it’s a false dichotomy since Encarta’s failing didn’t really have anything to do with motivation but business climate. In other cases like Firefox, he incorrectly states that it was a browser driven solely by unpaid volunteers; something that was true at some point in the early ‘00s but absolutely wasn’t at the time this came out.

In summary, I imagine I’d have given this 4 stars if I’d read it when it came out but today, you can safely remove from your to-read list and you won’t miss anything.

Luca Conti

240 pages but actually it's half of that. Outdated

Adam

What drives people to do great work? That's the basic question asked in this book and investigated through various examples at companies that have tried various approaches.

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Drive by Daniel H. Pink

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