Dan Pink is a well-spoken and extremely talented journalist and business author who I have been following ardently for 10+ years. Since his Free Agent Nation article in the December 1997 Fast Company (and subsequent book) I always believed that small business drives the economy and innovation around the world. His latest book “Drive” brings home the key aspects of what motivates individuals and organizations.
The argument that Pink makes is that years of psychology and economics research has shown that money motivates individuals only in extremely focused tasks such as building a widget or performing a step by step procedure consistently well. When faced with much more open-ended challenges that require problem solving and innovation, money doesn’t work so well to motivate. When figuring out problems without a set of steps, money actually demotivates and even leads some people to “game” the system. This is why sales people when motivated with quotas underachieve one quarter only to rocket ahead in a subsequent quarter to show a “25% improvement” which leads to bonuses. Dan Pink consistently points to the popular and not-so-popular research and draws a conclusion that 3 elements, when combined, provide the best motivation for people:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
With the advent of inexpensive, easy to use technology, I believe that it is possible to businesses to also motivate themselves around these 3 principles. And I think most successful businesses have already been practicing these 3 ideas — it’s probably why they are successful.
As an organization being free to control your own fate with the right culture and right tools enables innovation and the willingness to try something new. Getting good at sales, marketing, operations, finances requires “grit” as Mr. Pink puts it. To succeed, businesses need to aim high no matter how small they are and do what they are really good at and “get rid of the crappy stuff” (or outsource what they cannot master to ones that can). Finally, businesses must have a clear purpose to what they are doing — employees are no longer satisfied with being a cog in a machine and they must see themselves as part of a bigger picture. Businesses as well must see themselves as part of a bigger ecosystem of partners and relationships.
Success in business requires autonomy, mastery and purpose. Research has shown this to be true for people. Does your business have 1 or 2 of these covered but cannot quite get the 3rd put together? NewPath Technologies can definitely help with the autonomy and mastery part. It’s up to you to find the purpose.
Finally here’s a short video describing motivation in an unusual way:
