Book Review of Drive by Daniel H. Pink

 

This book is presented as the “Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us.”  Is it? The answer is that it depends. Things are never as clear as they appear. The principle of decomposing an issue into its component parts will tell you that there are many different approaches and opinions. For every “zig”, there is a “zag”. In this case, the well-researched results can be used to initiate a conversation on how to motivate employees and consultants as well as senior management. However, the author does not discuss the skills that can be used to motivate senior management and C-level personnel. 

The author presents three (3) attributes that encourage an employee to feel motivated at his or her place of employment. These are:

1. Autonomy – The employee must inherently feel “empowered” to accomplish a goal of either the project, department or enterprise to the extent that he or she can cut across cross-departmental rules or silos, or barriers within the department to accomplish the goal.
2. Sense of Accomplishment – The employee must feel that the objectives have been successfully accomplished, regardless of the money or extra benefits that are received.
3. Training or Continuing Education – The employee must inherently believe that he or she can continue to obtain new skills or “brush up” on existing skills. They can reinvent themselves and continue to ensure the firm as well as the individual is successful.

The author mentions that these attributes based on decades of scientific research which are described in the book are contrary to the existing approaches of work today. For example, firms are expanding the ability of their employees to work remotely from home. They are providing their employees with flex-time to enable them to accommodate a work-life balance. Besides the amenities such as gym or healthy food in the firm’s cafeteria or expanded vacation time, firms believe that these attributes will motivate an employee to succeed. Hence, the dichotomy. Which is the correct or apropos approach to motivate employees? The author does not provide the response nor describe that the response may differ from the corporate environment, employee or industry, another words, external factors which may affect every aspect of implementation and transformation. There is a basic assumption about people in whatever environment that people want to be accountable. The bottom line is that people hold different mindsets of their human capital capabilities. In fact, Robert Reich states “figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you’ll never really satisfy yourself that you’ve made it, and accept that that’s okay.” [i]

The inspiring point of this book is that the author presents a provocative approach that firms may want to consider in these times where millennials are requesting the external amenities and work-life balance in addition to  - autonomy, sense of accomplishment and training -  the same 3 attributes that the author is presenting. Can a millennial employee have it all? Remember we are seeing that people are not working at the same employer for a significant number of years as their predecessors. Nor do they want to. They want to take a break, and travel or just explore new experiences. People are not working to live, but living to work. The author presents significant ideas for senior management to consider, and how about startups. Is this the new model?

[i] Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink, RiverHead Books, 2009, page 119