A great read on the Truth About Motivation

Sooner or later, in your career or at home, you are going to find yourself needing to motivate a person or persons to achieve some defined result. Google the term motivation and you get more than 53,000,000 results. It’s clearly a topic that gets a lot of attention.



I recently finished reading Daniel H. Pink’s newest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. This is a must read for anyone serious about achieving results in their professional and personal life. This book takes a fresh look at the science of motivation and reveals that what we think we know, we do not.




In an easy to follow and logical progression Daniel discusses what the science of motivation has shown and how today’s businesses are, for the most part, not using the science to their advantage. He points out the old carrot and stick philosophy only works in a select number of situations. Today’s knowledge workers are motivated by something completely different. They need autonomy (time to work on their own), mastery (time/resources to become experts in their given area) and purpose (the job most be relevant to some greater good).

I am of course greatly simplifying the main points in the book. Daniel provides much more depth into each of these areas as well as a look into several companies who have achieved wonderful results by incorporated these points into their culture.

I cannot urge you enough to get copy and read this book. In addition check out Daniel’s blog and check out his talk about Drive on TED.