Exercise 2 Summary

The Puzzle of Motivation

By: Dan Pink

 The 18:36 minutes presentation by Dan Pink, a career analyst talked about the concept of motivation to a group of businessmen and organizational leaders. Motivation is goal oriented, meaning, with proper motivation, you can achieve what you desire for, which is your goal. The presentation started with a mind bungling and complex problem about ‘The Candle Problem’. This is attaching the candle to the wall with either a thumbtacks box or matches so that the candle will not drip on the wall. Two groups from the audience will have to try solving the problem. One group was promised that if it can solve the problem, the group would have timing to discover the norms and the other group was promised money as an incentive. The result simply shows that the group that was promised money was three minutes slower than the first group.

       This presentation is Dan Pink’s strategy of introducing what best motivation can be given to people especially those within the organization to improve their performance. Simply, Dan Pink’s tries to introduce that money as a motivator is not good for solving complex problem. This extrinsic reward or traditional reward may have been true in the 20^th century but will no longer work in the 21^st century.

        At the outset though, ‘The Puzzle of Motivation’ implies that organizational leaders today are puzzled or bungled what really type of motivation that works best in improving the performance of people especially employees in an organization. Again, money could be an incentive if the works require simple tasks but for works that require complex activities, money may not be the solution but it requires already true commitment from people who will be doing the task. In the candle problem, it is not easy to use thumbtacks box and matches so that the candle will not drip from the wall because it needs deeper thinking and analysis. Money could not just push the people who are involved in solving the problem because money will not have power to do it. Instead with serious commitment and engagement in solving the problem, could even be the way of finding the solution to this complicated problem.

        Organizational leaders are in a quandary whether to always raise the salary of their employees when their organizations experience high turnover. When employees seem not to perform well, most leaders think right away of increasing their salary or increase the incentive package because most often than not, the performance obviously did not show enormous improvement. In short, money as a motivator that was so effective during the last century is no longer effective as what we think today.

         According to Dan Pink, when the group that was promised money performed three minutes late than the other group is true to many organizations today. In fact, this finding was backed up by previous researches 40 years back until today. It is not always the case that people today can be incentivized with money in order to increase their performance. Perhaps with menial work, money can still a motivation but for works that require hard thinking and processing analytically, other types of incentives will work, which money could not. In fact, many organizations knew this but they still keep on ignoring them, ending only in frustrations. Businesses know this but they never practice it because they could take off their minds on the power of money. Money is an extrinsic motivator that works well with simple solutions and manual work. This was the belief and practice of the 20^th century. Also, for organizational leaders today, they thought that money can easily push their employees to solve the problem quicker or perform task better with money, but nope, it is different today.

       Dan Pink’s talked about an MIT study that found result similar to what he discussed. Simple mechanistic tasks, the extrinsic rewards may have improved their performance, but for any works that require a lot of thinking and processing a higher reward even decreased the performance.

        

           Modern psychology believes that intrinsic motivators are most effective motivations that businesses today should use or apply. Intrinsic motivations are autonomy, mastery and purpose. What do all these concepts mean? Dan Pink said that it is a motivation for the individual that his leader or manager gives him autonomy in direction his own life. In the parlance of organization, an individual performance better if his boss gives him more autonomy to do the task assigned of him on his pacing and means.

         On the other hand, an individual is getting motivated to improve his performance if his manager gives him tasks or roles where he is much challenged to get better and developed more his skills. In short, an individual who is supported by his organization to develop his mastery in doing things and making himself better is more motivated to perform his tasks. Also, an individual who knows the reason why he is doing such role or task will perform even better. Meaning, an employee must know why he has to do the task because he is helped or supported in achieving the goal. Manager or leader must do this for the individual by telling him the purpose of any activity because the individual will be more motivated to do this knowing the purpose why he is doing that thing.

         While this teaching maybe true in principle, Dan Pink meanwhile laments that most management do the exact opposite. Management may be good in improving the principle of compliance but decreasing the concept of monotony. One example of giving autonomy for an individual is giving him personal project. Along this, the speaker talks about a software company named Atlassian where it gives its engineers a day off just to do any project as long as it is related to their normal works to be considered their day off’s output for the organization. Autonomy is also practiced by Google because it gives its engineers 20% of their time to do personal projects but considered their outputs for the company.

        Dan Pink also discussed a more extreme approach known as ROWE – Results Only Work Environment. According to Mr. Pink, in this concept, people are allowed to work whatever hours they want as long as they do the work. In fact, the concept increases productivity because of the increased autonomy given to the employees. This concept was effective in decreasing staff turnover. Additionally, Dan Pink talked about Microsoft Encarta vs Wikipedia. Encarta gave extrinsic rewards to the professionals while Wikipedia have people that have worked for fun because they believed in the project. In 1999, Wikipedia overtook Encarta in popularity and revenue.

          Finally, in his talk, Dan Pink once again reminded the audience that in the business environment today, leaders should allow more autonomy to their people, added by giving them more mastery and purpose, businesses would be stronger and they may even change the world.