Not as good as A Whole New Mind

I usually love Daniel Pink's work, but this was tired and repetitive. I find he is insightful and typically puts an original twist on common wisdom. He missed the mark on this one. He used the same formula of his past successes but this one felt like a 50-100 page concept stretched out into a 200 pager to keep publishers happy. I would put the concepts in A Whole New Mind on par with the best works of Malcom Gladwell, Steven Levitt and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is recycled, repetitive and doesn't come close to his best.

99 people found this helpful

OK, but could have been a lot better

Daniel Pink makes a reasonable case for a more humane business environment. The keystone of his approach is Autonomy: people need autonomy (the ability to choose what they do, when they do it, how they do it, and who they do it with); and the more they have, the more productive they can be. More importantly, the usual approach of giving bonuses and other rewards for meeting prescribed goals can actually undermine autonomy, and thus productivity, over the long term. Pink cites a number of ingenious experiments that have demonstrated the negative effect of rewards in many situations.

It's not all about autonomy, though. According to Pink, people also need Mastery and Purpose. In other words, they like to get better at doing something that matters. Much of Pink's book is an exploration of ways that people have re-engineered work environments to make those needs easier to meet.

He closes the book with a long chapter on recommendations for change; but as in most books of this type, they are more pep talk than blueprint. Pink describes management in general as being an outmoded technology, but the successes he describes only happened because management gave the new approach their full support.

One aspect of the book I found particularly puzzling. Much of his argument is based on the work of psychologists Edward Deci and Robert Ryan, who propose three basic human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Mastery is a bit like competence; but what happened to relatedness? It seems to me that could have as big an impact on productivity as anything else.

85 people found this helpful

Can I get my money back for this strawman?

Any additional comments?

This book outright ignores certain psychological facts of human behavior in order to promote an idea that only works for those that already have basic needs in life met. While it would be wonderful to implement in a utopian world that is not reality.

While it may incorporate Maslow's Hierarchy it does its best to outright ignore the basic facts at the same time to bolster a point. Case studies are rarely people selected at random from society but are those willing to commit to testing for various reasons - motivating children (semi-random selections) who have their basic needs met in life is a far cry from a person (more than likely not the average test subject) trying to keep their family fed and secure. So using children and volunteer test subjects while comparing to adult test subjects that are NOT random is very misleading. I'll give you a hint: If pay (which he constantly decrees) is not a factor then why will people in the U.S. culture not work certain available jobs for low pay? But those in foreign countries are more than willing to do so for far less? This is just one of the obvious errors of his thinking.

I will admit I could not finish the book; I started reading other reviews which I would advise you to do as well (there are plenty on amazon-the critical ones are most helpful).

Don't waste your money.

15 people found this helpful

Repetitive

Like many books with a good idea or message, they are relatively simple. This, like many other books, repeats the main points ad nauseum. If you are in charge of a creative group of people, this is required information. If not, it's interesting for the first hour or two.

43 people found this helpful

Thought provoking

The author divides motivation into 3 versions... 1.0 is physical (food & sex), 2.0 is extrinsic Pavlov and money stuff, and 3.0 is the top of Maslow's triangle and a heaping helping from the book Flow. I thought the book read well, and put a fresh coat of paint on some older info that we shouldn't ignore.

16 people found this helpful

Highly Recommended!!!

If you could sum up Drive in three words, what would they be?

This book filters down all the empirical reseach into a very readable format.

What did you like best about this story?

I like how Pink proves that Corporate America is missing the point when it comes to motivating employees.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Every Manager/Leader needs to listen to this book before they draft a compensation plan that makes them look good, in the eyes of their management, but defeats the overall purpose of motivating their staff.

5 people found this helpful

Very interesting topic

This is an interesting topic and a well written synopsis of the science of motivation. If you are a leader in a working company who has had to motivate people in the past, this book will mostly confirm what you already know. Monetary and other extrensic incentives don't work and they can be very detrimental. That in itself makes it valuable as a work of literature. There are a lot of people in high levels of leadership who may actually need a book like this to tell them what they should already know by looking at the effects of the systems they have created.

I wouldn't call this book a must read or a game changer however. It is saying what a LOT of literature in the business world is currently saying. What it does do is organize what is very good science behind ideas that are being propogated in many other books. There are a few other books I would recommend ahead of this one but if you are well read in business and leadership texts, this is definitely not one you want to skip.

11 people found this helpful

Awful!

I enjoy Authors: Ariely, Levitt and some of Gladwell. DRiVE is a book in the same vein... almost... This book is a terrible knock off. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! If you enjoy the description of this book, then go read Freakanomics.

4 people found this helpful

Many valid ideas

Mr Pink's criticisms of traditional methods of motivation are entertaining and valid. Many of the ideas put forward are interesting and worthy of consideration.
However, while he advocates allowing employees more autonomy and freedom to decide things for themselves, he allows the reader less and less. He repeats fairly interesting ideas over and over, lecturing us about their value until one gets sick of them, particularly generalizing techniques that might work well for software developers, but few other businesses.
Instead of allowing the reader the decide for himself and ponder how he or she might incorporate some part of these ideas into his or her own business, he ends up hectoring us over and over about "FedEx days", "Flow" and "I-type" people.
It is ironic that, just as he insists we must abandon our rigid 9 to 5 mentality, he is shoe-horning everything into the constraining format of a book with a strong thesis he thinks he can sell.
It's a pity he doesn't have the courage to follow his own advice.

23 people found this helpful

great book

This book started out fairly slowly, but then it was fantastic with the thoughts and ideas it presented and the research that backs them up. It confirmed what I saw as a Recognition Coordinator for a major corporation. The carrot approach can create a lot of problems if not done correctly. I saw cheating, people being demotivated when there wasn't a contest on, etc. What I like most about this book were the ideas on how to encourage "Drive". I am going to buy the physical book for this to keep as a reference.

24 people found this helpful