Anyone interested in self-development and leadership knows that there is one thing at the core of developing successfully: motivation. I have never seen anyone leading oneself or others without consistently keeping motivation high. But what is the science behind it and how can we apply its principles in the workplace?

I’ve decided to read Drive by Daniel H Pink after participating in a leadership course. In the book, I didn’t find many surprises, but some concrete examples and frameworks to think about to create motivation at work. Here are my takeaways:

If you or your organization think about motivation as carrots and sticks, it might be good to rethink

The entire point of the book is to prove that motivational theories that build only upon biological and external forces are passé. What Pink advocates for is a motivation 3.0 that instead is based on intrinsic motivation. 

Looking at our society many cases cannot be explained solely with biological or reward forces. Think about all the contributors to Wikipedia who work for free or the social businesses that focus on purpose maximization instead of profit maximization.

The concepts above should be universally accepted, yet if you transfer them in the context of business, they in many cases do not apply. Many companies, if not all, are still built on the old tayloristic ideas of external motivators. Some examples that come to mind

• Salaries - complete x or prove z, and you’ll be considered for a raise.

• Bonuses - deliver x, and you’ll get y. 

• Contracts with partners - the more you spend with us, the higher the discount. 

All the examples above are built on the logic of ”if this….then that", and it is not hard to see that only relying on external motivators makes you weak in the long run.

As soon as a partner or an employee finds someone who can give them better rewards, they will leave. But what if instead, we focus on other aspects to find a sustainable way of keeping motivation up?

The dark side of using rewards

If the carrot and stick is not working, how do you reward work and keep people motivated? As all of the companies are driven by reaching their goals, I think it is extremely interesting to understand how they align interests with their employees to get there. Many times the rewards are given in the form of extra money, or immediate rewards, but is that the sustainable way of doing it?

Pink goes through many studies and research that prove that there is a gap between what motivational science is learning and how businesses are run.  His thesis, which I completely support, is that many times rewards are used to increase another person’s motivation or behavior. But in doing so there is a hidden cost of undermining the person's intrinsic motivation.

In the book, he brings up a striking example of this connected to blood donation.

A group of people who are voluntarily willing to give blood is divided into 3 groups. One gets no monetary reward, another gets a monetary reward after donating, and the third gets a monetary reward they could directly donate to charity. According to the extrinsic motivation theories the group that gets money should in a higher percent accept to give blood. They volunteered AND they got money. However, the study shows that that specific group is the group where the least amount of people donate. This is because their intrinsic motivation of donating to a good cause was waged out by the money they were offered. Volunteering to donate blood gives you a good feeling that the money can't buy, this is why if you solely do it from your intrinsic motivation, the results are better.

Not only rewards can wash away motivation, but they have also some striking side- effects:

• Rewards narrow our focus and the depth of our thinking 

This means that we might get to the result faster, but we are also inclined to not take into consideration any other component that makes the picture more complex. For this reason, Pink suggests never giving extrinsic rewards for creative tasks.  

When I read this, my mind couldn’t help but go to product development and how the idea of putting limits and narrowing our focus can sometimes be decremental. For this to work, I believe that we need to have many components in place. For example, a product vision and strategy that we should never go against. Otherwise, the risk is that we get to the goal short-term, but hurt ourselves in the long run.

This requires for sure dedication and leadership, and especially an understanding of what is the motivation behind: do we want to hit a KPI or do we want to build an experience that creates value for our business and users?

• Rewards Can lead people to take the quickest route  

Put to its limits this can lead to unethical behavior. But we do not have to go that far and think about a more concrete case that many of us have experienced: all the corners cut to close a deal. This might bring some people closer to a reward, but will inevitably leave others to deal with the consequences.

• Rewards are addictive 

Once they are offered we tend to think that when a similar situation arises, the result will be the same. They quickly become the status quo instead of an incentive, and they can lead to distorted decision-making as the one mentioned above.

A better way of rewarding work 

Pink´s idea is not to use extrinsic but intrinsic motivators. But what does that look like in practice?

One of my main takeaways from the book is that working with Motivation 3.0 is more demanding, as it requires more deliberate actions, shifting from ”giving rewards” to creating the conditions for motivation to happen. 

There are at least 3 things that every leader can act on to create the right conditions for type I motivation:

1. Create autonomy - around time, task, or team to work with is one of the biggest motivators you can enable. And it doesn’t require such a big effort. Simple things like allowing your people to have autonomy around their time, and avoiding using language like ”must or should” will do as a start. I assure you you’ll see immediate results when practicing.

2. Work with giving a purposeful activity, not commands. This to me is an obvious one, but I understand that it is not the norm everywhere. And for those that are not there, it is worth repeating: give your employees a goal, make sure they have to right competencies, step back, and see them bloom. Do not tell them how to do things. Do not tell them what to do. Do not assume that they have to do it ”your way” as it is the best way of doing it. Measure them by outcomes, and be there to support them as they need along the way. As a result, you’ll have missionaries and not mercenaries, in the words of Marty Cagan

3. Make space for innovation - allow people to work on their ideas and what they believe in. And you’ll see magic coming as a result. If you need some more convincing, here are three products that were born out of these kinds of intuition from employees: Post-its, Google Translate, and Gmail. 

I would also argue that there are other tools that you can add to your practice to support an environment where Motivation 3.0 thrives. Here are some that I use:

• A vision

For your company, or your product. Knowing what you want to achieve and what is the good that will be created from there, is what will keep motivation fueled. I have never seen people as motivated as when they get together to work towards a greater good.

• Invest in discovering every single person's motivation

I think the beauty of working with Motivation 3.0 is that it is by design specific to every single person. Some people might be motivated by having a bigger impact, some others by mastering a specific skill, and some others again by social recognition. As a leader you’ll not be able to know what motivates every single person, but here is a simple way of fixing it: ask them!

Some ways of encouraging that deeper understanding:

• Ask the question added in your 1-1

• Do a group exercise about inner motivation. You can see some examples here

• Reflect on it in the development talks when people raise what they want to put their energy into.

By knowing what motivates them, you can support every single one of your employees in a much better way.

• Clarify your own and your company's reason for being

To work more actively on finding one’s motivation Pink suggests two types of work that I believe are really impactful:

• Identify your sentence - What is the sentence that connects you to a greater purpose? This sounds really simple but requires quite a big dose of self-exploration. It can be anything from: ” She is able to solve any problem that comes to her in a way that leaves people energized”, or ”He raised two kids that became happy adults”. The sentence is what reconnects you to your bigger purpose and what gives you energy. Once you have it in place you can use it as a compass to guide you, at work and in your life.

• Identify the purpose of your company - Ever sensed a gap between execution and a bigger purpose? The gap might be caused by misalignment around the purpose of the product (or of the company). A simple yet impactful way of revealing it is by gathering a workshop and asking the participants to answer a simple question: what is the purpose of the product/company? Are the answers similar or all they all over the place? Try it out to see where your organization stands. And align motivation from there

Living on intrinsic motivation can be daunting

The part about the ”dark side” of intrinsic motivation is the part of the book that resonated with me the most and put some words on what I often feel. I am an advocate for working with intrinsic motivation, but this also means that you are never done.

Every ”Type I” person can recognize that the pleasure of the activity doesn’t come from external factors but from the activity itself. If that aligns with autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Becoming better and better at something is what matters, especially if that connects to a larger purpose.

The highest reward is to be in the flow - where the task is not too simple, yet not too difficult. This stretches the mind and the body just outside the comfort zone to produce growth.

But being in that flow is exhausting and daunting. Mastery is a mindset, yet one where we have to recognize what it takes to stretch ourselves, be ok with setbacks, and accept the pain. Mastery hurts, many times it is not fun, and it requires grit to stick to a greater plan. And it also requires you to understand that you’ll never be done.

The joy is in the pursuit, not in the realization and this can be exhausting.

I advocate that if we do our job well in product development, we’ll always be in the midst of change. New behaviors, new problems to solve, new goals to meet. And we have to tackle all of this with skills that we might not have developed quite yet. Think about the steps in a new career, when a product changes its phases, or the company does. This is where I tend to get either the most or the least energy. 

Mastery is physically and mentally exhausting and recognizing that I am not alone in this, but I share the joy and the pain with all the “Type I” people, was definitely my main realization from the book.