Introduction
- Drives
o 1: Biological
o 2: Respond to rewards and punishments
o 3: Intrinsic motivation
- Strengthen companies, elevate lives, improve world close gap what science
knows and what business does
Part one: a new operating system
Chapter 1: rise and fall of motivation 2.0
- Motivation 1.0: survival
- Motivation 2.0: external rewards and punishments
o Worked for routine tasks (20 century)
o Incompatible with 21 century:
How we organize what we do: we’re intrinsically motivated purpose
maximisers, not only extrinsically motivated profit maximisers
(Wikipedia)
How we think what we do: economists are finally realising that we’re full-
fledged human beings, not single-minded economic robots (10 dollar bill)
How we do what we do: for more & more people work is creative,
interesting, and self-directed rather than unrelentingly routine, boring
and other-directed (offshoring)
- Motivation 3.0: to learn, to create and to better the world
Chapter 2: 7 reasons carrots and sticks don’t work
- Baseline rewards not satisfied very little motivation
- Carrots and sticks + intrinsic motivation bad
o Getting a reward for something takes intrinsic interest away they offer a
short-term boost & reduces the willingness of someone to continue working
on it long-term
o If then rewards:
Give us less what we want:
Extinguish intrinsic motivation (children experiment with 3 groups
expected, unexpected, no reward group expected didn’t draw
after the experiment)
Diminish performance (experiment with 3 groups small, medium,
large reward large had worse performance)
Crush creativity (candle problem with 2 groups no reward, reward
reward group took 2.5 min longer to solve candle problem)
Crowd out good behavior (blood donation experiment pay people
to donate blood and less people do it)
Give us more of what we don’t want:
Encourage unethical behavior (daycare parents picking children
up from daycare doubled after they started to fine them for picking
up late)
Create addictions (rewards fun keep fun alive: bigger + more
frequently) (principal agent theory: agent tries to do what principal
asks offering agent a reward = signalling task is undesirable
agent won’t do task again if no reward)
, Foster short term thinking (companies that focus on quarterly
earnings less successful in long run)
o Sawyer effect: work play, play work (whitewash fence)
Chapter 2a: special circumstances when carrots and sticks do work
- Carrots and sticks + rule based routine tasks (algorithmic) effective
o Why:
Little intrinsic motivation to undermine
Not much creativity to crush
o More effective:
Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary
Acknowledge its boring
Allow people autonomy over how they complete it
- Carrots and sticks + nonroutine conceptual tasks (heuristic) perilous
(dangerous)
o Now that rewards: sometimes okay for more creative, right brain work
Consider nontangible rewards: praise & positive feedback
Provide useful information: informational or enabling motivators
Chapter 3: Type I and Type X
- SDT= self-determination theory: 3 innate psychological needs to be
motivated
o Competence, relatedness, autonomy
- Type X: fueled by extrinsic desires, less concerned with inherent satisfaction of
an activity and more with the external rewards to which an activity leads
- Type I: fueled by inherent satisfaction of the activity, concerns itself less with
external rewards an activity brings powered by our innate need to direct our
own lives, to learn and create new things and do better by ourselves and our
world
o Type I behavior is made not born
o Type I almost always outperform Type X in the long run
o Type I behavior does not distain money or recognition
o Type I behavior is a renewable resource
o Type I behavior promotes greater physical & mental well-being
Part two: the three elements to encourage Type I behavior
Chapter 1: autonomy
- Our default setting: to be autonomous and self-directed
o Circumstances (outdated notions of management) change default setting
turn us from Type I to Type X
- Encourage type I behavior: autonomy over …
o What they do: task
o When they do it: time
o Who they do it with: team
o How they do it: technique
- Companies that offer autonomy are outperforming their competitors
o ROWE = results only work environment
o FedEx days (3M post it, Google Translate) task
- Drives
o 1: Biological
o 2: Respond to rewards and punishments
o 3: Intrinsic motivation
- Strengthen companies, elevate lives, improve world close gap what science
knows and what business does
Part one: a new operating system
Chapter 1: rise and fall of motivation 2.0
- Motivation 1.0: survival
- Motivation 2.0: external rewards and punishments
o Worked for routine tasks (20 century)
o Incompatible with 21 century:
How we organize what we do: we’re intrinsically motivated purpose
maximisers, not only extrinsically motivated profit maximisers
(Wikipedia)
How we think what we do: economists are finally realising that we’re full-
fledged human beings, not single-minded economic robots (10 dollar bill)
How we do what we do: for more & more people work is creative,
interesting, and self-directed rather than unrelentingly routine, boring
and other-directed (offshoring)
- Motivation 3.0: to learn, to create and to better the world
Chapter 2: 7 reasons carrots and sticks don’t work
- Baseline rewards not satisfied very little motivation
- Carrots and sticks + intrinsic motivation bad
o Getting a reward for something takes intrinsic interest away they offer a
short-term boost & reduces the willingness of someone to continue working
on it long-term
o If then rewards:
Give us less what we want:
Extinguish intrinsic motivation (children experiment with 3 groups
expected, unexpected, no reward group expected didn’t draw
after the experiment)
Diminish performance (experiment with 3 groups small, medium,
large reward large had worse performance)
Crush creativity (candle problem with 2 groups no reward, reward
reward group took 2.5 min longer to solve candle problem)
Crowd out good behavior (blood donation experiment pay people
to donate blood and less people do it)
Give us more of what we don’t want:
Encourage unethical behavior (daycare parents picking children
up from daycare doubled after they started to fine them for picking
up late)
Create addictions (rewards fun keep fun alive: bigger + more
frequently) (principal agent theory: agent tries to do what principal
asks offering agent a reward = signalling task is undesirable
agent won’t do task again if no reward)
, Foster short term thinking (companies that focus on quarterly
earnings less successful in long run)
o Sawyer effect: work play, play work (whitewash fence)
Chapter 2a: special circumstances when carrots and sticks do work
- Carrots and sticks + rule based routine tasks (algorithmic) effective
o Why:
Little intrinsic motivation to undermine
Not much creativity to crush
o More effective:
Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary
Acknowledge its boring
Allow people autonomy over how they complete it
- Carrots and sticks + nonroutine conceptual tasks (heuristic) perilous
(dangerous)
o Now that rewards: sometimes okay for more creative, right brain work
Consider nontangible rewards: praise & positive feedback
Provide useful information: informational or enabling motivators
Chapter 3: Type I and Type X
- SDT= self-determination theory: 3 innate psychological needs to be
motivated
o Competence, relatedness, autonomy
- Type X: fueled by extrinsic desires, less concerned with inherent satisfaction of
an activity and more with the external rewards to which an activity leads
- Type I: fueled by inherent satisfaction of the activity, concerns itself less with
external rewards an activity brings powered by our innate need to direct our
own lives, to learn and create new things and do better by ourselves and our
world
o Type I behavior is made not born
o Type I almost always outperform Type X in the long run
o Type I behavior does not distain money or recognition
o Type I behavior is a renewable resource
o Type I behavior promotes greater physical & mental well-being
Part two: the three elements to encourage Type I behavior
Chapter 1: autonomy
- Our default setting: to be autonomous and self-directed
o Circumstances (outdated notions of management) change default setting
turn us from Type I to Type X
- Encourage type I behavior: autonomy over …
o What they do: task
o When they do it: time
o Who they do it with: team
o How they do it: technique
- Companies that offer autonomy are outperforming their competitors
o ROWE = results only work environment
o FedEx days (3M post it, Google Translate) task
