Best Book Summary + PDF: Drive, by Daniel Pink by Allen Cheng – allencheng – Visit for more summaries like this one. Best Book Summary +
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Best Book Summary + PDF: Drive, by Daniel Pink by Allen Cheng https://www.allencheng.com/drive-book-summary-pdf-daniel-pink/ Are you feeling unmotivated in your job and life? Are you finding your current goals unsatisfying to work toward? Drive , by Daniel Pink, believes that your work structure is to blame . Historically, employers have motivated employees through financial rewards and kept workers on a tight leash. These principles worked well when people were primarily working in assembly lines, but today™s creative work demands more: autonomy, mastery, and purpose . In this Drive summary, you™ll learn: Why financial rewards can lower your motivation and tempt cheating How every human, including you, is motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose Why some companies give unlimited vacation days and pay you to work on personal projects Why paying people to donate blood actually reduces donation rate How to convince your boss to adopt changes and give you more freedom 1 / 22
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Criticism of Drive The Drive book has interesting ideas, and they seem intuitively true upon introspection. Most people probably do prefer more freedom in their work, and they do want to improve their skills. However, Drive is very light in cited research and heavy in anecdotes , which is unfortunately a common problem in self-improvement/management books. I prefer books that are grounded in robust research, not the latest flight of fancy that might be disproven in a few years. The concepts in Drive originated in basic research, but many applications in management are only anecdotes Œ Pink describes how a certain company instituted 20% free time, and incidentally they started growing! Select anecdotes suffer heavily from bias and are relatively unconvincing. Furthermore, several policies touted by the Drive book have received backlash or even been repealed . For instance, Google™s famous 20% time has been repealed (I™ll explain why below). Netflix offers unlimited vacation days, but workers actually complain that it sets unclear expectations that cause people to take less vacation. The policies cited in this book haven™t been sufficiently proven to stand the test of time. Finally, a vast volume of research has likely gone into showing the effect of financial incentives in improving work. Like many management books, Drive doesn™t do a complete enough job of exploring the opposing stance Œ in this case, surveying the vast literature on incentives . For example, this study on windshield installers showed that paying per piece, rather than a flat salary, increased productivity by 40%. Introduction Our Drive summary begins with a research study. In the 1940s, operant conditioning was the standard model of behavior. If you give a reward to someone after a behavior, you encourage that behavior to happen again. If you don™t reward a behavior, it extinguishes over time. This idea was borne out in numerous animal studies and also the model for human management in the workplace. But in 1949, Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology, discovered a deviation from this standard reward model. His team had created a mechanical puzzle for rhesus monkeys to complete. They placed the puzzles in the monkey cages to habituate them to the puzzle in preparation for the real studies that would happen two weeks later. But, strangely, the monkeys began playing with the puzzles independently, with determination and what looked like enjoyment . Without any explicit rewards like fruit juice, the monkeys learned to solve the puzzle of their own volition. The absence of rewards removed this observation from standard operant conditioning. Harlow offered another model of motivation: fiintrinsic reward.fl The joy of the task was its own reward. Even more surprisingly, introducing rewards like food decreased monkey performance Œ they made more errors and solved the puzzles less frequently. External rewards seemed to disrupt performance, 2 / 22
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contrary to standard reward models. This research was controversial and lay fallow until 1969, when a graduate student named Edward Deci discovered Harlow™s research and tried a new experiment with humans. All participants were tasked with solving puzzles requiring rearrangement of separate plastic pieces into shapes: The experiment ran in one-hour sessions held over 3 consecutive days. In each session, a participant was given 3 puzzles. When the participant had solved 2 of 3 puzzles, Deci told the participant he had to step out for a few minutes to retrieve the 4 th puzzle, and the participant was free to do whatever she liked. Deci stepped out for precisely eight minutes and watched what the participant did when left alone. This observation period was meant to measure motivation Œ the longer someone played when unsupervised, the more motivated the person was. Deci split participants into two groups: group A and group B. On Day 1, he treated both groups the same. On Day 2, Deci treated them differently Œ he told Group A that they™d be paid $1 for every puzzle they solved. Group B got no reward. Then, on Day 3, he told Group A there wouldn™t be enough money to pay for Day 3, so they would be unpaid. Once again, Group B got no reward, just more puzzles. Here were the results (summarized, not exact): Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Reward? Minutes Reward? Minutes Reward? Minutes Group A No Reward 3.7 Reward 5 No Reward 2.9 Group B No Reward 3.7 No Reward 3.7 No Reward 3.9 For Group B, the play time didn™t change substantially over the 3 days Œ the fact that they were engaged to begin with echoed what Harlow had found with rhesus monkeys, that the joy of the task was sufficient motivation. But for Group A, Deci observed that introducing a reward gave a momentary boost to motivation Œ in Day 2, Group A participants increased their play time by a minute. But on Day 3, when Deci removed 3 / 22
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the reward, play time plummeted , even below the original Day 1 when no reward was even suggested. This suggested that rewards enhanced performance in the short term, at the expense of intrinsic motivation . When the reward is removed, overall motivation decreases. Intrinsic motivation, therefore, is a natural drive. People tend to seek out novelty and challenges and to learn. But it requires a nurturing environment, one where external rewards don™t quash this spirit. Daniel Pink argues that most businesses haven™t reformed in light of these discoveries, and Drive is his effort to repair the gap. This Drive summary has 3 parts: Part One examines the flaws in the predominant carrots-and-sticks motivational model. Part Two explores three elements of intrinsic motivation Œ autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Part Three contains resources to nurture intrinsically-motivated behavior, like discussion questions and exercises. Part One: A New Operating System Our Drive book summary starts with understanding why historical motivational methods are no longer sufficient for today™s work. Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0 Much like computers, society is run by underlying operating systems Œ a set of protocols, laws, and understandings that govern how we view the world and how we behave with each other. The earliest operating system, termed Motivation 1.0 in the Drive book, was simple, biological: we are trying to survive, and satisfying the primal needs of food, water, shelter, and sex is a fundamental driving force. This kept the human species alive for much of our evolutionary past. But when humans created more complex societies, Motivation 1.0 was inadequate. Satisfying primal urges would have encouraged theft, murder, and adultery. So common expectations of behavior were put into place to suppress Motivation 1.0. Humans transcended to organize around a second drive, Motivation 2.0: to seek reward and avoid punishment. This worked especially well during industrialization in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. A scientific approach to management viewed workers as cogs in a machine Œ lubricate them appropriately with external rewards or punishments, and they will run smoothly to keep the overall machine humming. This is a relatively simple model to understand, monitor, and enforce. Motivation 2.0 enabled great efficiency of manual labor and assembly-line performance, which spurred much of the growth in the past 200 years. 4 / 22
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But recently, Motivation 2.0 has run into limitations itself. It fails to completely explain certain natural phenomena like: Wikipedia successfully existing as a result of crowd volunteering without pay. In contrast, Microsoft Encarta, an encyclopedia from the 1990s, failed to keep up despite massive investment from Microsoft and paid experts. This example generalizes to open source projects like Linux and Apache, where contributors are driven strongly by unpaid motivations. New corporate structures, like the filow-profit limited liability company,fl fior the fiB corporation,fl both of which emphasize social good rather than profit maximization. This growing movement suggests that people aren™t driven entirely by financial rewards. Behavior economics research showing that people weren™t always rational calculators of economic self-interest , and that our decisions didn™t always bargain into wealth-maximization. For example, people who are bargaining reject offers they feel are unfair, even if it means both parties walk home empty handed. See list of 25 cognitive biases for more examples of faulty thinking People leaving lucrative jobs to take lower-paying ones that provide a clearer purpose or are more inherently enjoyable. Note that extrinsic rewards are not absent from the examples above. For example, open-source contributors gain experience and resume line items that enhance earning potential later. But this isn™t a direct and immediate reward, so standard operant conditioning models don™t apply. Recognizing Motivation 2.0™s limits are important because the nature of our work is changing from the rote to the creative. The assembly line-like jobs of the early 20 th century are disappearing to outsourcing and automation. Our work is basing more on critical thinking and creativity. But as we™ll see later in this Drive summary, extrinsic rewards can suppress intrinsic motivation and reduce creativity . Furthermore, Pink claims that companies are becoming leaner and less hierarchical, trimming manager levels Œ thus limiting direct oversight over workers. Companies need people who are self-motivated, and they need to understand how to avoid crushing this spirit. Chapter 2: Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don™t Work– Motivation 2.0 is based on two ideas: 1. Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. 2. Punishing an activity will get you less of it. Daniel Pink acknowledges that these elegant rules are still effective in the workplace. In particular, compensation serves as a fibaseline rewardfl or fihygiene factorfl Œ if it™s not there, the worker cannot focus. She™ll obsess over how unfair her situation is and be anxious about her problems. fiThe best use of money is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.fl 5 / 22
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But Motivation 2.0 is incomplete and can be counterproductive. Less of What We Want Rewards Decrease Intrinsic Motivation Remember Tom Sawyer™s fence painting allegory, in which he™s punished with whitewashing a fence. When another boy walks by, Tom feigns enjoyment and mastery. Painting the fence isn™t a punishment Œ it™s a privilege, something to be mastered only by artisans. The boy begs to help, but Tom refuses until the boy gives him an apple. Soon the neighborhood boys are all whitewashing. Wrote Mark Twain, fiWork consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.fl We™ve already seen some studies corroborating this concept, like Harlow and Deci™s above. Pink says this is a robust finding across hundreds of studies. So rewards contingent on performance have negative effects on intrinsic motivation. Why? They require people to forfeit some autonomy Œ if a worker is doing something for money, then someone else if pulling their lever, and the worker no longer feels fully in control of their lives. Extrinsic rewards also quash the cognitive dissonance that comes with unrewarded work. When volunteering, a person subconsciously tends to think, fiwell I™m not getting paid for this work, so if I™m working hard, I must enjoy it.fl Rewards Decrease High Performance Researchers found that financial incentives can decrease overall performance. In one experiment, economists paid workers in rural India to play several games requiring motor skills (like throwing tennis balls at a target), creativity (unscrambling anagrams), or concentration (recalling a large number). Workers were given different levels of rewards Œ 4 rupees (one day™s pay), 40 rupees, or 400 rupees (5 months™ pay). Surprisingly, the 40-rupee group performed no better than the 4-rupee group, and the 400-rupee group actually performed worse . Rewards Decrease Creativity In one experiment, participants were given a puzzle requiring creativity to solve. Here it is. You™re seated 6 / 22
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By the way, here’s the solution to the puzzle above: Rewards Decrease Good Behavior People naturally want to do good things. Counter-intuitively, paying them for good behavior reduces it. A study of Swedish blood donors found that paying people about $7 for each donation reduced the percentage of women who were willing to give blood to 30%, down from 52% in the control unpaid group. (Men were unaffected by pay.) Interestingly, a third group was given the option of donating the $7 to charity. Here the donation rate remained unchanged, at 53%. (Note in the original study , 70% of donors in this group opted to donate to charity.) Another study found that giving blood donors a day off work increased donations. What explains these effects? Donating blood is an inherently altruistic task, giving a fifeeling that money can™t buy.fl Removing barriers to altruism, like giving a day off, increased its success rate. But directly paying for it reduces internal motivation. More of What We Don™t Want Rewards Increase Bad Behavior 8 / 22
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In the inverse of the previous section, rewards can promote cheating. Rewards narrow focus to whatever it takes to get the reward, at the expense of the bigger picture . Examples: Corporate scandals seem driven by short-term goals and rewards Œ Enron cooking its books to meet short term revenue goals; Wells Fargo imposing sales quotas and seeing frontline workers opening accounts without customer permission A study showing that when child care centers charged parents for picking up their child late, the delinquency rate increased . Researchers surmised that previously, parents were driven to treat the caretakers fairly, partly in return for caring for their precious children. But a fine reduced the relationship to a transactional level , where parents could now make a rational decision that the fine was worth the tardy time. In contrast, intrinsic motivation views the task as a reward in itself. When the goal is to do one™s best and grow, it™s impossible to act unethically or chat, because the person you™ve disadvantaged is only yourself. Rewards Create Addiction Just like a drug, short-term rewards can induce a large effect initially, but two perversions happen over time: 1) people habituate to the reward and need more of it to induce behavior , and 2) when the reward is withdrawn, the intended behavior shuts off . From a physiological standpoint, this is unsurprising, since task rewards trigger the same dopaminergic system that respond to drugs. Like Tom Sawyer realized, giving a reward for behavior inherently signals that it™s an unpleasant task. And once you™ve given a reward for a task, there™s no going back Œ it™ll be really difficult to have the person run the task on her own volition. Studies also show that activation in the nucleus accumbens, part of the dopaminergic system, increases risky choices and risk-seeking mistakes. This may partly explain why casinos give their participants rewards (free drinks, surprise gifts) to further lubricate the gambling cycle. Rewards Encourage Short-Term Thinking Extrinsic rewards can narrow the focus of our decision making to short-term effects, ignoring long-term benefits. Researchers found that public companies that devote substantial resources to quarterly earnings guidance deliver lower long-term growth rates . Original study here . The causes are unclear but may 9 / 22
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include: Earnings-obsessed companies invest less in R&D, especially cutting R&D to avoid missing forecasts Companies that focus on short-term growth do so at the expense of long-term stability Companies that focus on quarterly earnings reports do so because they are already in ill health, and they want to continue building confidence This concept has implications for activities that are ideally constructed for the long term, like education and healthcare. If students get a prize for reading three books, they may focus more on the short-term reward and less on the benefit of long-term love of learning. [Allen note: it™s unclear if paying for short-term rewards can be the kick-off for a habit that persists after the reward is taken away, as described in The Power of Habit ] Chapter 2A: –and the Special Circumstances When They Do In the Drive book, Daniel Pink admits that Carrots and sticks do work well in certain conditions. First, ensure a secure baseline of compensation and work environment. This takes compensation off the table as a concern. Without this fihygiene factor,fl concentration on any task becomes difficult. Extrinsic Rewards for Routine Tasks Next, extrinsic rewards work when the task at hand is routine and doesn™t involve creative thinking . Here, rewards don™t threaten intrinsic motivation because there is little intrinsic motivation to be undermined . For instance, if you have to rally your staff to pitch in on a package shipping task over the weekend, promising a party at the end can help get them in the door. Even better, supplement the reward with these three items: Explain why the task is important. Talk about the larger purpose of the work and how it helps achieve your organization™s mission. Acknowledge that the task is boring. This establishes empathy and helps people understand this is the exception. Allow autonomy in completion of the task. When the task is boring, giving freedom in how to achieve the task sparks more intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic Rewards for Non-Routine, Creative Tasks 10 / 22
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Creative tasks are more likely to be driven by intrinsic motivation, which extrinsic rewards can undermine. So try to avoid the fiif-thenfl reward, where you announce beforehand that the reward is conditional on completion of the task. Three tips: Use an unexpected finow thatfl reward Œ the reward should be unexpected and given only after the task is finished . Because it™s unexpected, the reward is less likely to undermine intrinsic motivation while the task is being completed. [Furthermore, unexpected rewards stimulate more dopamine than unexpected rewards .] Use nontangible rewards. Instead of cash, give positive feedback, which can actually increase intrinsic motivation. Provide useful feedback. Be specific and praise effort and strategy, rather than the outcome. For example, rather than saying, figreat job, you completed the task like I said,fl say fiThe initiative you took was inspiring, and I like your design choice here.fl Chapter 3: Type I and Type X In this Drive book summary, we™ll discuss two types of behavior: Type X behavior is driven by extrinsic desires and less by the intrinsic satisfaction of an activity. With its contingent rewards, Motivation 2.0 stimulates Type X behavior. Type I behavior is driven by intrinsic desires Œ autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Motivation 3.0. People tend to be driven primarily by either Type X or Type I. Consider yourself Œ what gets you up in the morning and pushes you through the day? What motivates that colleague that you love to hate? Organizations also tend to be driven primarily by either Type X or Type I motivation. Picture a strict, commission-based salesforce running on Type X, vs a free-working company like Google as Type I. In Drive , Daniel Pink makes the following points about Type I behavior: Type I™s outperform Type X™s in the long term. While extrinsic rewards can fuel short-term energy, they tend to exhaust and cause habituation. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, can be self-sustaining and renewable. Type I behavior comes from both nature and nurture. Pink believes that Type I is the natural state of most human beings (imagine the curiosity of a child), but that Type X is forced upon them by the way we run our homes, our schools, and our workplaces. But with education and the right environment, Type X™s can become Type I™s. Type I™s still care about money and recognition. Type I™s require a baseline compensation to take money off the table. But after a certain point, compensation is less a driver for Type I™s than it is a form of recognition or feedback about performance. 11 / 22
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