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This is a really cool article that goes really well with Daniel Pink's book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Pink says that people need 3 th
by jhwhite 11y ago
This is a really cool article that goes really well with Daniel Pink's book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Pink says that people need 3 things to truly feel motivated at work. Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose.
That seems to be based on self-determination theory mentioned in the article that autonomy, relatedness, and competence are human's basic psychological needs.
The link (http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2004_DeciVansteenkiste_SDTandBasicNeedSatisfaction.pdf http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2004_DeciVa...) about self-determination takes you to a paper that references a researcher, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He has done a lot of research on optimal experience and has written a great book about it called Flow.
- ryanobjc 11y agoI think Pink was making a even stronger statement than you give him credit for. His statement in the book is that traditional methods of improving performance -- more pay for more work -- just doesn't work for tasks that require problem solving. In fact, counter-intuitively, experiments have demonstrated lower performance when paid to accomplish problem solving tasks. What Pink outlines is that to improve performance on problem solving tasks (including creative tasks) you have to provide people with Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy. The latter thing is often missing from most managerial textbooks since most managerial textbooks seem to have been written for industrial workers where precise control is emphasized. This totally backfires for IT jobs (and other types of jobs), and everyone has seen those disasters.
- chrisweekly 11y agoThe ~10 minute RSA Animate video for "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" is terrific: http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
- digi_owl 11y agoNo surprised there, as the MBA is basically a generic codification of what goes on in a widget factory.
- danieltillett 11y agoUnfortunately productivity and motivation are not always aligned and in business only productivity matters.
- threatofrain 11y agoMaybe I'm wrong, but last I checked, Csikszentmihalyi's research never generated a following except outside of academia like in the media / business gurus. I fear that he's one of the massive names where the attention to his research goes away as soon as he dies.
- mkremins 11y agoHe also gets a fair amount of attention from game designers, especially those of us who have one foot in academia and one in the industry / "real world".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]