DRIVE: THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US

Author: İnanç Civaz   Contact: inanc.civaz

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

February 24st,  2019 

Author Daniel Pink explains the purpose for writing his book as:

“Clarifying the contradiction between the realities coming existence from scientific research and their implementations in the business world regarding the motivation.”

Therefore, in the introduction part, the author shares Harry Harlow’s experiment on lab monkeys in 1940’s with two colleagues and Ed Deci’s experiment between different student groups by using soma puzzle cube. Results of these experiments might be found “weird” for that time, because results referred to a fact called “instinctive motivation”, which is not linked to any external prizes or material conditions. Monkeys starting to solve the puzzles without any commands or rewards; higher efficiency and interest of the students who are not paid than the ones who are paid on the soma puzzle cube demonstrate an important point on instinctive motivation:

“Execution of the assignment was providing an instinctive reward.”

The socioeconomic order we are living in has a social operating system; moreover, most of this system is formed by hypotheses about the human behavior. After the early period operating system Motivation 1.0 which is emerged with biological stimulations was replaced with the Motivation 2.0, which is based on reward and punishment system, Pink now presents new and updated operating system to his readers: Motivation 3.0!

“According to Motivation 2.0, the method to make us move on towards the right path was shaking a fresher carrot or a more harmful stick in front of us.

But, Motivation 2.0 was faced some resistance when the economic structure became complicated and people developed more sophisticated abilities. Because, science proves that Motivation 2.0’s main principle based on punishment and reward (external rewards) destructs the instinctive motivation and causes a backlash in performance, creativity and even ethical behavior.

Of course, there are some conditions where punishment and reward system is useful: for routine works which are not described as interesting and do not require creative thinking, rewards might provide a little motivation and even can be useful.

However, Motivation 3.0 deals with the responsibility and the pleasure which lay in the action’s nature rather than the external rewards.

The author also refers to the popular Type I and Type X concepts by looking at these operating systems.

• Motivation 2.0 operating system survives with the Type X behavior pattern which is linked to external factors and rewards rather than internal desires.
• On the other hand, Type I behavioral pattern develops the new version operating system Motivation 3.0. Interesting thing is that, Type I behavioral pattern doesn’t come with birth, it can be accessed later on.

At this point, it is argued that no one can always behave according to a single pattern (Type I or Type X) but there are some clear characteristic features. People who behave according to the Type I pattern are physically and spiritually healthier. Moreover, in the long run, they are more successful than Type X people.

Three factors which develop Type I behavioral pattern are:

• Autonomy
• Mastership
• Goal

Motivation 2.0 believes that if people are let to be free, they would hinder their business and the autonomy would harm the sense of responsibility. But, Motivation 3.0 has a different approach; when people have autonomy in the goal, time, technique and team, their sense of responsibility increases, and they can shape their own’s destiny.

Mastership is defined as the desire to be better in the book. Having a rogatory mind, solving complex problems, trying new ways and taking responsibility bring mastership in the long term.

“Autonomous people who work foot their mastership reach high performance level. But if they work for a more supreme goal, than they would have enormous success.“

The author mentions that the sense of goal creates a very powerful energy source and says that it is important for the Motivation 3.0. The secret of happiness is also having true goals instead of short-run interest goals and realizing them.

In the last part of our book, “Type I Team Bag”, the author makes a guidance to apply Type I behavioral pattern into daily life. It is beneficial sometimes to look what we have.

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