Drive Chapter Summary

I am writing to you to describe my take on the book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About what Motivates us”. The main goal of the book is to show the typical “carrot and stick approach”, in management is old and in need of an upgrade. Pink refers to a new system that relies more on intrinsic motivating factors, rather than extrinsic motivation from money and bonuses. This new way of motivating employees is backed up by evidence and a new innovating way of running a business for better and happier workers.

Pink draws from many examples of motivation throughout the whole book. However, one of the concepts really stuck with me and I believe the concept could relate to chapter 7 swimmingly. The “Sawyer Effect”, draws the conclusion that simply

So even if you find the activity enjoyable, simply being payed to do it, can sometimes ruin the intrinsic motivation behind why you do that activity in the first place. The textbook draws the conclusion that higher levels of motivation has a direct correlation on job performance, “People who experience higher levels of motivation tend to have higher levels of task performance”(Mcgraw P. 232). Furthermore, this is important to note because in contrast to the sawyer effect, in order to maximize motivation and task performance you must also realize the types of rewards you are giving to your employees. If your employee is already motivated and enjoying his task because of intrinsic motivating factors, it might actually lower their task performance if you simply give them a cash bonus. However, an employee must have a certain amount of pay and financial security fulfilled or else none of these intrinsic motivation matters because they will constantly be distracted by the thought of money. As the textbook also mentions, the average

Pink describes these elements as autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is further discussed and looked into by the textbook, “Trivial tasks tend to be less satisfying than tasks that make employees feel like they’re aiding the organization or society in some meaningful way”(Mcgraw p.145), this quote is a perfect example of the element “purpose”. An employee wants to feel that they are meaningful and this happens when they are challenged and have autonomy. This resonated a lot with me because now I see my future job as not only a decent pay, but more so an enjoyable and challenging one as well. I would choose a much lower paying job if I knew that my performance and job satisfaction was much higher. Autonomy in my future job is an essential for my job satisfaction, “Autonomy is the degree to which the job provides freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual performing the work.”(Mcgraw p. 148). Pink emphasizes heavily on autonomy and uses examples from companies that run on a purely autonomy system. The “a results only work environment”, is a perfect example of this. This theory uses the basis that you do not need a 9-5 job or even any strict hours, all it requires is for you to get your work done by a certain time and it does not matter when or how you do it. This gives a huge boost in productivity and makes you feel more like a “player”,