Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink, takes the reader on a journey through management and leadership past, present, and future. Describing the different forms of organizational motivation as something akin to the operating system of a computer, Pink provides a thoughtful insight into the methods of management in the past using different types of incentives or punishments to motivate employees. These techniques have been developing throughout the history of humanity, from the earliest version, which Pink has labeled "Motivation 1.0." Ancient humans used this practice, and in some form may still be in use by remote groups of people still living in hunter-gatherer groups. A second-generation operating system, Motivation 2.0 has been used for hundreds of years by most companies. The first iteration has long since been replaced in the industrialized world by version 2.0, which most companies still run today. Despite the fact that many of its premises have been proven to be ineffectual at building long-term, successful motivation, it continues to be the de facto standard. This paper will also explore the salient features of a new school of thought, which Pink calls Motivation 3.0, which has proven to be very effective in driving business success.

What motivates people? Pink describes the very early days of humanity as operating under Motivation 1.0, where the basic drive of day-to-day operations was based purely on survival. This operation was functionally limited to what was later described by psychologist, Abraham Maslow, as the physiological base of the hierarchy of needs. These needs consist of the need for food, water, shelter, and clothing. For a long time, humanity could run under that subsistence living, but as people started settling into communities and stopped living as hunter-gatherers, a different way of cooperating was needed in order to get things done. As Pink points out in the book, a new operating system was needed so people would be prevented from stealing someone else's dinner or stealing their wife (Pink, 2009). This need ushered in the understanding of a second drive that motivates people, which is referred to in the book as Motivation 2.0. This understanding assumes that humans are more than just the total of their biological urges.

While Motivation 2.0 is still serving some purposes and companies very well, there are flaws and it can be unreliable. It is at odds with the way people naturally organize and do things, as well as how they think about things, and how people do the things they do outside of the bounds of the corporate rules set in place by 2.0. A major flaw in Motivation 2.0 is the systemic belief that "Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. Punishing an activity will get you less of it" (Pink, 2009, p. 32). This concept is referred