Neal Conan recently interviewed author Daniel Pink about his new book entitled Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
The interview and book discuss what motivates employees to work. The premise of the book is that traditional motivation for superior work is counterproductive. Pink says, “Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.”
“I looked at 40 years of science, 40 years of research into human motivation. And what it says, over and over again, is that these carrots and sticks, they absolutely work, but in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. And particularly for creative tasks, for conceptual tasks, they don’t work very well.”
He further discusses how rewarding employees with flexibility and “providing individuals with enormous amounts of autonomy leads to a more satisfied, more engaged, more productive, more innovative work force.”
I think we all need to ask ourselves if we want button-pusher employees or if we want innovators. I think that most of us would agree that we want innovators. If so, then we need to start allowing more autonomy which will ultimately encourage innovation.
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