Daniel Pink— Drive

Type I (intrinsically motivated) and Type X (extrinsically motivated)

"self-determination theory"
The main mechanisms of Motivation 2.0 are more stifling than supportive...the less salient they are the better. When people use rewards to motivate, that's when they're most demotivating...instead, create environments where our innate psychological needs can flourish.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

Type I behavior is made, not born.
Type I's almost always outperform Type X's in the long run.
Type I behavior does not disdain money or recognition.
If an employee's compensation doesn't hit the baseline— i.e doesn't pay her an adequate amount, or if her pay isn't equitable compared to others doing similar work— that person's motivation will crater, regardless of whether that person in Type I or Type X...one reason adequate pay is so essential is that it tkaes the issue of money off the table so they can focus on the work itself.
Recognition is similar. Type I's like to be recognized for their accomplishments because recognition is a form of feedback...but it is not the goal itself.

Type I behavior is a renewable resource.

Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mental well-being.
Ultimately it depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose...self-directed...connects the quest for excellence to a larger purpose.

Autonomy
Our default setting is to be autonomous and self-directed. Unfortunately, circumstances— including outdated notions of "management"— often conspire to change that default setting and turn us from Type I to Tyoe X. To encourage Type I behavior, and the high performance, it enables, the first requirement is autonomy. People need autonomy over task (what they do), time (when they do it), team (who they do it with), and technique (how they do it). Companies that offer autonomy, sometimes in radical doses, are outperforming their competitors. (what about due dates)

Mastery
While Motivation 2.0 required compliance. Motivation 3.0 demands engagement. Only engagement can produce mastery— becoming better at something that matters. And the pursuit of mastery, an important but often dormant part of our third drive, has become essential to making one's way in the economy.
Mastery begins with "flow"— optimal experiences when the challenges we face are exquisitely matched to our abilities. Small workplaces therefore supplement day-to-day activities with "Goldilocks tasks"— not too hard and not too easy. But mastery also abides by three peculiar rules:
• Mastery is mindset: it requires the capacity to see your abilities not as finite, but as infinitely improvable.
• Mastery is pain: it demands effort, grit, and deliberate practice.
• Mastery is an asymptote: it's impossible to fully realize, which makes it simultaneously frustrating and alluring.

Purpose
Humans, by their nature, seek purpose— a cause greater and more enduring than themselves. But traditional business have long considered purpose ornamental— a perfectly nice accessory, so long as it didn't get in the way of the important things.
But that's changing— thanks in part to the rising tide of baby boomers reckoning with their own mortality. In Motivation 3.0, purpose maximization is taking its place alongside profit maximization as an aspiration and a guiding principle. Within organizations, this new "purpose motive" is expressing itself in three ways: — in goals that use profit to reach purpose;
— in words that emphasize more than self-interest;
— in policies that allow people to pursue purpose on their own terms.
This move to accompany profit maximization with purpose maximization has the potential to rejuvenate businesses and remake our world.

Daniel Pink— Drive

The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0

• Motivation 1.0— biological motivations that come from within

• Motivation 2.0— external rewards and punishments delivered by the environment

•Motivation 3.0— 'intrinsic motivation' fueled by the innate, internal desire for Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose"self-motivation"

Motivation 2.0 has endured for a very long time due to industrialization and Frederick Taylor's "Scientific Management" (workers are just small cogs in the 'machine' that is a company or business); however, as scientifically proven, it can actually work to undermine the goals it professes to achieve— once you introduce monetary rewards into work it actually reduces people's pure enjoyment of a task and therefore reduces their productivity; this is especially applicable in relation to heuristic (open-ended) tasks versus algorithmic (rote) tasks; similar to Ariely's social/moral norms versus market norms (once you pay people for volunteering it no longer has its moral value and is thus less satisfying on an intrinsic level; money as a reward can become addicting— you need more of it each time you want to 'inspire' someone to do a task s/he obviously didn't want to do to begin with

Why Carrot and Sticks Don't (Often) Work

Seven Deadly Flaws of Carrots and Sticks:
1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. (most recently, like the teachers and administrators in Atlanta Schools)
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.

If you have routine/rote task that must be done and you need to offer a reward (which can be effective in these circumstances), make sure you:
— offer a rationale for why the task is necessary;
— acknowledge that the task is boring;
— allow people to complete the task their own way. (doesn't sound like a lot of assignments in school)
Then offer an extrinsic reward that is unexpected (i.e. not necessarily promised at the beginning of the task). Engage in "now that" rewarding versus "if-then."

Daniel Pink— Real Brainstorming

Based on Tom Kelley's book, The Ten Faces of Innovation:

1) Go for quantity.
Good ideas emerge from lots of ideas. Set a numerical goal— say, a total of one hundred.

2) Encourage Wild Ideas.
Extremism is a virtue. The right idea often flows from what initially seems outlandish.

3) Be Visual.
Pictures unlock creativity.

4) Defer Judgment.
There's no such thing as a bad idea, so banish the naysayers. Think creatively first and critically later.

5) One conversation at a time.
Listen, be polite, and build on others' suggestions.

Capture everything in writing.

Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

High Concept, High Touch

High Concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention.

High Touch involves the ability to empathize, to understand the subtleties of hyman interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian, in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

The Six Senses

DESIGN
It's economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.
A combination of utility enhanced by significance...far more accessible to the masses both in terms of exposure and generation (democratization of design)...Design is inter-disciplinary... ultimate purpose— changing the world.

STORY
It's not enough to marshal an effective argument...The essence of persuasion, communication, and self-understanding has become the ability also to fashion a compelling narrative.
Context enriched by emotion...a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why that matters...Stories are easier to remember because stories are how we remember...'humans are not ideally set-up to understand logic; they are ideally set-up to understand stories.' An organization's knowledge is contained in its stories.

SYMPHONY
What's in greatest demand today isn't analysis but synthesis— seeing the big picture, crossing boundaries, and being able to combine disparate pieces into an arresting new whole.
To detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; to invent something new by combining elements nobody thought to pair...perspective is more important than IQ...be a "boundary-crosser"...risk thinking unconventional thoughts...convention is the enemy of progress..."imaginative rationality"— mastery of metaphor...MQ (Metaphor Quotient)...the more we understand the appropriate personal metaphors, the better we understand ourselves...relationships between relationships...

EMPATHY
What will distinguish those who thrive will be their ability to understand what makes their fellow woman or man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others...to imagine yourself in someone else's position and to intuit what that person is feeling...to stand in others' shoes, to see it with their eyes, and to feel with their hearts (as opposed to sympathy— feeling bad for someone).
Good designers put themselves into the mind of whoever is going to be experiencing the product or service they're designing...understand context... (Paul Ekman)

PLAY
In the Conceptual Age, we all need to play...Too much sobriety can be bad for your career and worse for your general well-being.

MEANING
Abundance has freed us from day-today struggles and allowed millions of people to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment.

Jim Collins— Good to Great, The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity Within the Three Circles)

The Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles:

1) What you can be the best in the world at (and equally important, what you cannot become the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn't mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best in the world at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.

2) What drives your economic engine. (single denominator-- cash flow per x)

3) What you are deeply passionate about. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.

A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.

It takes four years on average to get a Hedgehog Concept.

Characteristics of the Council:
1. The Council exists as a device to gain understanding about important issues facing an organization.
2. The Council is assembled and used by the leading executive and usually consists of five to twelve people.
3. Each Council member has the ability to argue and debate in search of understanding, not from an egoistic need to win a point or protect a parochial interest.
4. Each Council member retains respect of every other Council member, without exception.
5. Council members come from a range of perspectives, but each member has deep knowledge about some aspect of the organization and/or the environment in which it operates.
6. The Council includes key member of the management team but is not limited to members of the management team, not is every executive automatically a member.
7. The Council is a standing body, not an ad hoc committee assembled for a specific project.
8. The Council meets periodically, as much as once a week or as infrequently as once per quarter.
9. The Council does not seek consensus, recognizing that consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions. The responsibility for the final decision remains with the leading executive.
10. The Council is an informal body, not listed on any formal organization chart or formal documents.

Jim Collins— Good to Great, Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

Confront the brutal facts of your current situation.

When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident. It is impossible to make good decisions without infusing the entire process with an honest confrontation of the brutal facts.

Creating a climate where the truth is heard involves four basic practices:
1) Lead with questions, not answers.
2) Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
3) Conduct autopsies, without blame.
4) Build red flag mechanisms that turn information into information that cannot be ignored.

Indeed, for those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you. You can overcome the liabilities of having charisma, but it does require conscious attention.

Yes, leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted. There's a huge difference between the opportunity to "have your say" and the opportunity to be heard. Great leaders understand this distinction, creating a culture wherein people had a tremendous opportunity to be heard, and ultimately, for the truth to be heard.

Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

** The Stockdale Paradox**:

Retain faith that you will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties.
AND at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.

Spending time and energy trying to "motivate" people is a waste of time and effort. The real question is not, "How do we motivate our people?" If you have the right people, they will be self-motivated. The key is to not de-motivate them. One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality.

Jim Collins— Good to Great, First who...Then What

First, get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it.

Build a superior executive team. Then figure out the best path to greatness. (Versus the "genius with a thousand helpers" model.)

Compensation and incentives are important, but for different reasons... The purpose of a compensation system should not be to get the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get the right people on the bus in the first place, and to keep them there.

Three principles:
1) When in doubt, don't hire— keep looking.
2) When you know you need to make people change, act.
3) Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Whether someone in the "right" person has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background, or skills.

One of the crucial elements in taking a company from good to great is somewhat paradoxical. You need executives, on the one hand, who argue and debate— sometimes violently— in pursuit of the best answers; yet, on the other hand, who unify fully behind a decision, regardless of parochial interests.

Dan Ariely— The Upside of Irrationality, Introduction

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (Dan Ariely)

in a perfectly rational world, procrastination would never be a problem. We would simply compute the values of our long-term objectives, compare them to our short-term enjoyments, and understand that we have more to gain in the long term by suffering a bit in the short term.

We routinely behave as if sometime in the future, we will have more time, more money, and feel less tired or stressed. “Later” seems like a rosy time to do all the unpleasant things in life,

When the designers of modern technologies don’t understand our fallibility, they design new and improved systems for stock markets, insurance, education, agriculture, or health care that don’t take our limitations into account (I like the term “human-incompatible technologies,” and they are everywhere). As a consequence, we inevitably end up making mistakes and sometimes fail magnificently.

This is the real goal of behavioral economics: to try to understand the way we really operate so that we can more readily observe our biases, be more aware of their influences on us, and hopefully make better decisions.

Inventors, companies, and policy makers can take the additional steps to redesign our working and living environments in ways that are naturally more compatible with what we can and cannot do.

This is what behavioral economics is about—figuring out the hidden forces that shape our decisions, across many different domains, and finding solutions to common problems that affect our personal, business, and public lives.