Daniel H. Pink. Drive

THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER
Daniel H. Pink
2 MILLION CO P IES SOLD WORLDWIDE
D an iel H. P in k is the author of several books, including the N ew York
Times bestselling W hen, To S ell is Human and A W hole N ew M ind. His
books have been translated into 35 languages and have sold more than
2 m illion copies worldwide. He lives in Washington D.C. with his wife
and children.
danpink.com
‘Inspiring’ G uardian
'D rive drives a stake through the bedrock of classic “if-then”

motivational theory. It demonstrates in an entertaining way how self
motivated rewards provide their own behavioural alchemy, exposing
the mismatch between what science knows and business does’
JAMES BORG, author of 'Persuasion: The Art o f Influencing People
‘D rive is the rare book that w ill get you to think and inspire you to act.
Pink makes a strong, science-based case for rethinking motivation -
and then provides the tools you need to transform your life’
DR MEHMET OZ, co-author of You: The Owner's M anual
‘Pink’s ideas deserve a wide hearing. Corporate boards, in fact, could

do well by kicking out their pay consultants for an hour and reading
Pink’s conclusions instead’ Forbes
‘A powerhouse’ USA Today
‘Pink’s analysis - and new model - of motivation offers tremendous

insight into our deepest nature’ Publishers Weekly
‘These lessons are worth repeating, and if more companies feel

emboldened to follow Mr. Pink’s advice, then so much the better’
W all Street J o u rn a l
‘Important reading . . . an integral addition to a growing body of

literature that argues for a radical shift in how businesses operate’
Kirkus
Also by Daniel H. Pink
When
To S ell is Human
The A dventures o f Joh n n y Bunko
A Whole N ew M ind
Free A gent N ation

Drive
The Surprising
Truth About What
Motivates Us
Daniel H. Pink
II
СANONGATE
This paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2 0 18 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2 0 10 by Canongate Books Ltd,

14 H igh Street, Edinburgh E H i iT E
canongate.co.uk
Copyright © Daniel H. Pink, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the Unites States in 2009 by Riverhead Books, an imprint of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson St, New York, N Y 10 0 14 , U SA
‘Sext’, copyright © 19 55 by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems by W.H. Auden,

is reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
W hile the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers
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the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after
publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not
assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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ISB N 978 1 78689 17 0 9
Unless otherwise indicated, all illustrations in this book are by Rob Ten Pas
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A
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4________, ________ /
F or Sophia, E liza, a n d S au l—
the su rp risin g trio that m otivates me

CONTENTS
IN T R O D U C T IO N : T he P u z z lin g P u z zle s of H a rry H arlow

and E d w a rd Deci l
“In scientific terms, it w as akin to rollin g a steel b a ll dow n an in clin ed

plan e to measure its velocity— only to w atch the b a ll flo a t into the a ir
instead. It suggested that our understanding o f the gra vita tion a l p u lls on
our behavior w as inadequate— that w hat w e thought were fix ed law s h a d
plenty o f loopholes.”
Part One
A N ew O p e ra tin g System
C H A P T E R 1. T he Rise and Fall of M o tiva tio n 2.0 15
"B ut in the first ten years o f this century—a period o f tru ly sta ggerin g
underachievem ent in business, technology, a n d socia l progress — w e’ve
Contents
discovered that this sturdy, o ld operating system doesn 't work nearly
as w ell. It crashes— often a n d unpredictably. It forces people to devise
workarounds to bypass its flaw s. M ost o f a ll, it is p rovin g incom patible
w ith m any aspects o f contemporary business. ”
C H A P T E R 2. Seven R easons C a rro ts and S tick s

(O ft e n ) D o n ’t Work . . . 34
“In other words, rewards can perform a w eird sort o f behavioral alchem y:
They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They can turn p la y
into work. ’’
C H A P T E R 2A. . . . and the Special C ir c u m s ta n c e s

When T h e y Do 60
“W hile an operating system centered aroun d rew ards a n d punishm ents has
ou tlived its usefulness a n d badly needs an upgrade, that doesn’t mean w e
should scrap its every piece. ”
C H A P T E R 3. Type I and Type X 70
“A picture may be worth a thousand words— but sometimes neither is as

potent as ju s t two letters. ”
X
Contents
Par t T w o
The T h r e e E l e m e n t s
C H A P T E R 4. A u to n o m y 85
“Perhaps it ’s tim e to toss the very w ord ‘m anagem ent’ into the lin gu istic
ash heap alon gside ‘icebox’ a n d ‘horseless carriage. ’ This era doesn’t c a ll for
better management. It ca lls fo r a renaissance o f self-direction. ”
C H A P T E R 5. M a ste ry 10 9
“In our offices a n d our classrooms w e have w a y too much com pliance a n d
w ay too little engagement. The form er m ight g et you through the day, but
only the latter w ill g et you through the night. ”
C H A P T E R 6. Purpose 131
“It’s in our nature to seek purpose. B ut that nature is now being revealed
a n d expressed on a scale that is dem ographically unprecedented and,
u n til recently, scarcely im aginable. The consequences cou ld rejuvenate our
businesses a n d remake our world. ”
Contents
Par t T h r e e
The Type I T o o l k i t
Type I for Individuals: Nine Strategies for Awakening Your Motivation 1 53
Type I for Organizations: Nine Ways to Improve Your Company,

Office, or Group 162
The Zen of Compensation: Paying People the Type I Way 170
Type I for Parents and Educators: Nine Ideas for Helping Our Kids 174
The Type I Reading List: Fifteen Essential Books 185
Listen to the Gurus: Six Business Thinkers Who Get It 1 95
The Type I Fitness Plan: Four Tips for Getting (and Staying)
Motivated to Exercise 201
Drive: The Recap 203
Drive: The Glossary 209
The Drive Discussion Guide: Twenty Conversation Starters to

Keep You Thinking and Talking 212
Find Out More— About Yourself and This Topic 2 17
A ck now ledgm ents 219

N otes 221
Index 231
XII
Drive
INTRODUCTION
The P u z zl i n g Puzzles o f
H a r r y H a r l o w and Edward Deei
n the m iddle of the last century, two young scientists conducted

I experim ents that should have changed the world— but did not.
H arry F. H arlow was a professor of psychology at the U niversity
of W isconsin who, in the 1940s, established one of the w o rld’s first
laboratories for stud yin g prim ate behavior. One day in 1949, H arlow
and two colleagues gathered eig h t rhesus m onkeys for a two-week
experim ent on learning. The researchers devised a sim ple m echani
cal puzzle lik e the one pictured on the next page. Solving it required
three steps: p u ll out the vertical pin, undo the hook, and lift the
hinged cover. P retty easy for you and m e, far more ch allen gin g for a
thirteen-pound lab monkey.
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H a rlow ’s pu zzle in th e s ta r tin g (left) a n d s o lv e d (rig h t) p ositio n s.
The experim enters placed the puzzles in the m onkeys’ cages to

observe how they reacted— and to prepare them for tests of their
problem -solving prowess at the end of the two w eeks. B ut alm ost
im m ediately, som ething strange happened. U nbidden by any outside
urgin g and unprom pted by the experim enters, the m onkeys began
p layin g w ith the puzzles w ith focus, determ ination, and what looked
lik e enjoym ent. And in short order, they began figurin g out how the
contraptions worked. B y the tim e H arlow tested the m onkeys on
days 13 and 14 of the experim ent, the prim ates had become quite
adept. They solved the puzzles frequently and q u ick ly; tw o-thirds of
the tim e they cracked the code in less than sixty seconds.
Now, this was a b it odd. Nobody had taugh t the m onkeys how
to remove the p in , slide the hook, and open the cover. Nobody had
rewarded them w ith food, affection, or even qu iet applause when
they succeeded. And that ran counter to the accepted notions of how
prim ates— in clud ing the bigger-brained, less hairy prim ates known
as hum an beings— behaved.
Scientists then knew that two m ain drives powered behavior. The
2
T h e P u z z l i n g P u z z l e s o f H a r r y H a r l o w a n d E d w a r d Deei
first was the biological drive. H um ans and other anim als ate to sate
their hunger, drank to quench their th irst, and copulated to satisfy
th eir carnal urges. B ut th at w asn’t happening here. “Solution did not
lead to food, water, or sex gratification ,” H arlow reported.1
B ut the only other known drive also failed to explain the m on
keys’ peculiar behavior. If biological m otivations came from w ith in ,
this second drive came from w ithout— the rewards and punishm ents
the environm ent delivered for behaving in certain ways. This was
certain ly true for hum ans, who responded exquisitely to such exter
nal forces. If you prom ised to raise our pay, w e’d work harder. If you
held out the prospect of g e ttin g an A on the test, w e’d study longer.
If you threatened to dock us for show ing up late or for incorrectly
com pleting a form, w e’d arrive on tim e and tick every box. B ut that
d id n ’t account for the m onkeys’ actions either. As H arlow wrote, and
you can alm ost hear him scratching his head, “The behavior obtained
in this investigation poses some interesting questions for m otivation
theory, since significant learning was attained and efficient perfor
m ance m aintained w ithout resort to special or extrinsic incentives.”
W h at else could it be?
To answer the question, H arlow offered a novel theory— w hat
am ounted to a th ir d drive: “The performance of the task ,” he said,
"provided intrinsic rew ard.” The m onkeys solved the puzzles sim p ly
because they found it g ratifyin g to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it.
The joy of the task was its own reward.
If this notion was radical, w hat happened next only deepened the
confusion and controversy. Perhaps this new ly discovered drive—
H arlow eventually called it “intrinsic m otivation”— was real. B ut
surely it was subordinate to the other two drives. If the m onkeys
were rewarded— w ith raisins!— for solving the puzzles, th ey’d no
doubt perform even better. Yet when H arlow tested th at approach,
the m onkeys actually m ade m ore errors and solved the puzzles less
3
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frequently. “Introduction of food in the present experim ent,” H arlow

wrote, “served to disrupt performance, a phenomenon not reported
in the literatu re.”
Now, this was rea lly odd. In scientific term s, it was akin to ro ll
in g a steel ball down an inclined plane to m easure its velocity—
only to w atch the ball float into the air instead. It suggested that
our understanding of the gravitational p ulls on our behavior was
inadequate— that w hat we thought were fixed law s had p len ty of
loopholes. H arlow em phasized the “strength and persistence” of the
m onkeys’ drive to com plete the puzzles. Then he noted:
It w ould appear that this drive . . . m ay be as basic and strong

as the [other] drives. Furtherm ore, there is some reason to
believe that [it ] can be as efficient in facilitatin g learn in g.2
A t the tim e, however, the prevailing two drives held a tig h t g rip on
scientific th in k in g. So H arlow sounded the alarm . H e urged scien
tists to “close down large sections of our theoretical jun kyard” and
offer fresher, more accurate accounts of hum an behavior.3 H e warned
that our explanation of w hy we did what we did was incom plete. He
said th at to tru ly understand the hum an condition, we had to take
account of this third drive.
Then he pretty much dropped the whole idea.
R ather than b attle the establishm ent and begin offering a more
com plete view of m otivation, H arlow abandoned this contentious
lin e of research and later became famous for studies on the science
of affection.4 H is notion of this third drive bounced around the p sy
chological literature, but it rem ained on the periphery— of behav
ioral science and of our understanding of ourselves. It would be two
decades before another scientist picked up the thread that H arlow
had so provocatively left on that W isconsin laboratory table.
4
T h e P u z z l i n g P u z z l e s o f H a r r y H a r l o w a n d E d w a r d Deci
In the sum m er of 1969, Edward Deci was a Carnegie M ellon U n i

versity psychology graduate student in search of a dissertation topic.
D eci, who had already earned an M BA from W harton, was in trigued
by m otivation but suspected th at scholars and businesspeople had
m isunderstood it. So, tearing a page from the H arlow playbook, he
set out to study the topic w ith the help of a puzzle.
Deci chose the Soma puzzle cube, a then popular Parker B roth
ers offering that, thanks to YouTube, retains som ething of a cult
follow ing today. The puzzle, shown below, consists of seven plastic
pieces— six com prising four one-inch cubes, one com prising three
one-inch cubes. Players can assem ble the seven pieces into a few m il
lion possible com binations— from abstract shapes to recognizable
objects.
T he s ev en p ie c e s o f th e Som a p u z z le u n a ss e m b le d (left) a n d th en fa s h io n e d in to o n e o f
s e v e r a l m illio n p o ssib le co n figu ra tio n s.
For the study, Deci divided participants, m ale and fem ale u n i
versity students, into an experim ental group (w hat I’ll call Group
A) and a control group (w hat I’ll call Group B). Each participated in
three one-hour sessions held on consecutive days.
H ere’s how the sessions worked: Each participant entered a room
and sat at a table on top of which were the seven Soma puzzle pieces,
5
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draw ings of three puzzle configurations, and copies of Time, T he N ew

Yorker, and P layboy. (Hey, it was 1969.) Deci sat on the opposite end
of the table to explain the instructions and to tim e performance w ith
a stopwatch.
In the first session, mem bers of both groups had to assemble the
Soma pieces to replicate the configurations before them . In the sec
ond session, they did the same th ing w ith different draw ings— only
this tim e Deci told Group A that th ey’d be paid $ 1 (the equivalent
of nearly $6 today) for every configuration they successfully repro
duced. Group B, m eanw hile, got new draw ings but no pay. Finally,
in the third session, both groups received new draw ings and had to
reproduce them for no compensation, just as in session one. (See the
table below.)
H O W TH E TWO G R O U P S W E R E T R E ATED
D ay 1 Day 2 Day 3
G roup A N o re w a rd Rew ard N o rew ard
G ro u p В N o rew ard N o rew ard N o rew ard
The tw ist came m idw ay through each session. After a participant

had assembled the Soma puzzle pieces to m atch two of the three
draw ings, Deci halted the proceedings. He said that he was going to
give them a fourth draw in g— but to choose the righ t one, he needed
to feed their com pletion tim es into a computer. And— this being the
late 1960s, when room -straddling m ainfram es were the norm and
desktop PCs were still a decade away— that m eant he had to leave
for a little w hile.
On the w ay out, he said, “I shall be gone only a few m inutes, you
6
T h e P u z z l i n g P u z z l e s o f H a r r y H a r l o w and E d w a r d Deci
m ay do w hatever you lik e w hile I’m gon e.” B ut Deci w asn’t really
p lu g g in g numbers into an ancient teletype. Instead, he w alked to
an adjo in in g room connected to the experim ent room by a one-way
window. Then, for exactly eigh t m inutes, he watched what people
did when left alone. D id they continue fiddling w ith the puzzle,
perhaps attem p tin g to reproduce the third draw ing? Or did they do
som ething else— page through the m agazines, check out the center
fold, stare into space, catch a quick nap?
In the first session, not surprisingly, there w asn’t much difference
between what the Group A and Group В participants did during
that secretly w atched eigh t-m in ute free-choice period. Both contin
ued p layin g w ith the puzzle, on average, for between three and a
h alf and four m inutes, su ggestin g they found it at least somewhat
interesting.
On the second day, during which Group A participants were paid
for each successful configuration and Group В participants were not, the
unpaid group behaved m ostly as they had during the first free-choice
period. But the paid group suddenly got really interested in Soma puz
zles. On average, the people in Group A spent more than five m inutes
messing with the puzzle, perhaps gettin g a head start on that third
challenge or gearing up for the chance to earn some beer money when
Deci returned. This makes intuitive sense, right? It’s consistent with
what we believe about motivation: Reward me and I’ll work harder.
Yet w hat happened on the th ird day confirmed D eci’s own suspi
cions about the p eculiar workings of m otivation— and g en tly called
into question a g u id in g prem ise of modern life. This tim e, Deci told
the participants in Group A that there was only enough money to
pay them for one day and that this third session would therefore be
unpaid. Then things unfolded just as before— two puzzles, followed
by D eci’s interruption.
7
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D uring the ensuing eigh t-m in ute free-choice period, the sub
jects in the never-been-paid Group В actu ally played w ith the puzzle
for a little longer than they had in previous sessions. M aybe they
were becom ing ever more engaged; m aybe it was just a statistical
q uirk. B ut the subjects in Group A, who previously had been paid,
responded differently. They now spent sign ifican tly less tim e p lay
in g w ith the puzzle— not only about two m inutes less than dur
in g their paid session, but about a full m in ute less than in the first
session when they in itia lly encountered, and obviously enjoyed, the
puzzles.
In an echo of what H arlow discovered two decades earlier, Deci
revealed th at hum an m otivation seemed to operate by laws that ran
counter to w hat most scientists and citizens believed. From the office
to the p layin g field, we knew w hat got people go in g. Rewards—
especially cold, hard cash— intensified interest and enhanced per
formance. W h at Deci found, and then confirmed in two additional
studies he conducted shortly thereafter, was alm ost the opposite.
“W hen money is used as an external reward for some activity, the
subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activ ity,” he w rote.’ Rewards
can deliver a short-term boost— just as a jo lt of caffeine can keep
you cranking for a few more hours. B ut the effect wears off—and,
worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term m otivation to continue the
project.
H um an beings, Deci said, have an “inherent tendency to seek
out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise th eir capacities,
to explore, and to learn .” B ut this third drive was more fragile than
the other two; it needed the righ t environm ent to survive. “One
who is interested in developing and enhancing intrinsic m otiva
tion in children, em ployees, students, etc., should not concentrate on
external-control system s such as monetary rew ards,” he wrote in a
a
follow-up paper.6 Thus began w hat for Deci became a lifelong quest
to rethink w hy we do w hat we do— a pursuit that sometim es put
him at odds w ith fellow psychologists, got him fired from a business
school, and challenged the operating assum ptions of organizations
everywhere.
“It was controversial,” Deci told me one spring m orning forty
years after the Soma experim ents. “Nobody was expecting rewards
w ould have a negative effect.”
T h is is a b o o k about m otivation. I w ill show th at m uch of w hat

we believe about the subject just isn ’t so— and that the insights that
H arlow and Deci began uncovering a few decades ago come m uch
closer to the truth. The problem is that most businesses haven’t
caught up to this new understanding of w hat m otivates us. Too m any
organizations— not just com panies, but governm ents and nonprofits
as w ell— still operate from assum ptions about hum an potential and
in divid ual performance that are outdated, unexam ined, and rooted
more in folklore than in science. They continue to pursue practices
such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes
in the face of m ounting evidence that such measures usually don’t
work and often do harm . W orse, these practices have infiltrated our
schools, where we p ly our future workforce w ith iPods, cash, and
pizza coupons to “incentivize” them to learn. Som ething has gone
wrong.
The good news is that the solution stands before us— in the
work of a band of behavioral scientists who have carried on the pio
neering efforts of H arlow and Deci and whose quiet work over the
last half-century offers us a more dynam ic view of hum an m otiva
tion. For too long, there’s been a m ism atch between w hat science
9
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knows and w hat business does. The goal of this book is to repair that
breach.
D rive has three parts. Part One w ill look at the flaws in our
rew ard-and-punishm ent system and propose a new w ay to th ink
about m otivation. Chapter 1 w ill exam ine how the p revailin g view
of m otivation is becom ing incom patible w ith m any aspects of con
tem porary business and life. Chapter 2 w ill reveal the seven rea
sons w hy carrot-and-stick extrinsic m otivators often produce the
opposite of w hat they set out to achieve. (Follow ing that is a short
addendum , Chapter 2a, that shows the special circum stances when
carrots and sticks actually can be effective.) Chapter 3 w ill introduce
w hat I call “Type I” behavior, a way of th in k in g and an approach to
business grounded in the real science of hum an m otivation and pow
ered by our third drive— our innate need to direct our own lives, to
learn and create new th ings, and to do better by ourselves and our
world.
Part Two w ill exam ine the three elem ents of Type I behavior and
show how in dividuals and organizations are using them to improve
performance and deepen satisfaction. Chapter 4 w ill explore auton
omy, our desire to be self-directed. Chapter 5 w ill look at mastery,
our urge to g et better and better at w hat we do. Chapter 6 w ill
explore purpose, our yearning to be part of som ething larger than
ourselves.
Part Three, the Type I Toolkit, is a comprehensive set of resources
to help you create settings in which Type I behavior can flourish.
Here you’ll find everything from dozens of exercises to awaken
m otivation in yourself and others, to discussion questions for your
book club, to a supershort sum m ary of D rive that w ill help you
fake your w ay through a cocktail party. And w h ile this book is
m ostly about business, in this section I’ll offer some thoughts about
w
how to apply these concepts to education and to our lives outside of

work.
B ut before we get down to a ll th at, le t’s b egin w ith a thought
experim ent, one that requires go in g back in tim e— to the days when
John M ajor was B rita in ’s prim e m inister, Barack O bama was a skinny
young law professor, Internet connections were d ial-up , and a b lack
berry was still just a fruit.
11
Part One
A New
Operating System
CHAPTER 1
The Rise and Fall

o f M o t i v a t i o n 2.0
m agine it ’s 1995. You sit down w ith an economist— an accom

I plished business school professor w ith a Ph.D. in economics. You
say to her: “I’ve got a crystal ball here that can peer fifteen years into
the future. I’d lik e to test your forecasting powers.”
She’s skeptical, but she decides to hum or you.
“I’m going to describe two new encyclopedias— one just out, the
other to be launched in a few years. You have to predict w hich w ill
be more successful in 2 0 1 0 .”
“B rin g it ,” she says.
“The first encyclopedia comes from M icrosoft. As you know,
M icrosoft is already a large and profitable company. And w ith this
year’s introduction of W indow s 95, it ’s about to become an era-
defining colossus. M icrosoft w ill fund this encyclopedia. It w ill
pay professional w riters and editors to craft articles on thousands
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of topics. W ell-com pensated managers w ill oversee the project to

ensure it ’s com pleted on budget and on tim e. Then Microsoft w ill
sell the encyclopedia on CD -RO M s and later online.
“The second encyclopedia won’t come from a company. It w ill be
created by tens of thousands of people who w rite and ed it articles for
fun. These hobbyists won’t need any special qualifications to p artici
pate. And nobody w ill be paid a dollar or a euro or a yen to w rite
or edit articles. Participants w ill have to contribute th eir labor—
som etim es tw enty and th irty hours per w eek— for free. The encyclo
pedia itself, which w ill exist online, w ill also be free— no charge for
anyone who wants to use it.
“N ow,” you say to the economist, “th in k forward fifteen years.
According to m y crystal b all, in 2010, one of these encyclopedias
w ill be the largest and most popular in the world and the other w ill
be defunct. W h ich is w h ich ?”
In 1995, I doubt you could have found a sin gle sober econ
om ist anywhere on planet Earth who w ould not have picked that
first model as the success. A ny other conclusion w ould have been
laughable— contrary to nearly every business prin cip le she taugh t
her students. It would have been like asking a zoologist who would
w in a 200-m eter footrace between a cheetah and your brother-in-law.
N ot even close.
Sure, that ragtag band of volunteers m ig h t produce som ething.
B ut there was no w ay its product could compete w ith an offering
from a powerful profit-driven company. The incentives were all
w rong. Microsoft stood to g ain from the success of its product; every
one involved in the other project knew from the outset that success
w ould earn them nothing. Most im portant, M icrosoft’s w riters, ed i
tors, and managers were paid. The other project’s contributors were
not. In fact, it probably cost them money each tim e they performed
free work instead of rem unerative labor. The question was such a
76
T h e R i s e a n d F a l l o f M o t i v a t i o n 2. 0
no-brainer that our economist w ouldn’t even have considered p u t

tin g it on an exam for her M BA class. It was too easy.
B ut you know how things turned out.
On October 31, 20 09 , M icrosoft p ulled the p lu g on M SN E ncarta,
its disc and online encyclopedia, w hich had been on the m arket for
sixteen years. M eanw hile, W ikip ed ia— that second m odel— ended
up becom ing the largest and m ost popular encyclopedia in the world.
Ju s t eig h t years after its inception, W ikip ed ia had more than 13 m il
lion articles in some 260 languages, in clud ing 3 m illio n in English
alone.1
W h at happened? The conventional view of hum an m otivation
has a very hard tim e explaining this result.
T H E T R I U M P H OF C A R R O T S A N D S T I C K S
/ Computers— whether the g ia n t m ainfram es in D eci’s experim ents,

% the iM ac on which I’m w ritin g this sentence, or the m obile phone
chirping in your pocket— all have operating system s. Beneath the

surface of the hardware you touch and the program s you m anipulate
is a complex layer of software that contains the instructions, proto
cols, and suppositions that enable everything to function smoothly.
Most of us don’t th ink m uch about operating system s. W e notice
them only when they start failin g — when the hardware and software
th ey’re supposed to m anage grow too large and com plicated for the
current operating system to handle. Then our com puter starts crash
in g. W e com plain. And sm art software developers, who’ve always
been tin kerin g w ith pieces of the program , sit down to w rite a fun
dam entally better one— an upgrade.
Societies also have operating system s. The law s, social customs,
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and economic arrangem ents that we encounter each day sit atop
a layer of instructions, protocols, and suppositions about how the
w orld works. And m uch of our societal operating system consists of
a set of assum ptions about hum an behavior.
In our very early days— I mean very early days, say, fifty thou
sand years ago— the underlying assum ption about hum an behav
ior was sim ple and true. W e were tryin g to survive. From roam ing
the savannah to gather food to scram bling for the bushes when a
saber-toothed tiger approached, that drive guid ed most of our
behavior. C all this early operating system M otivation 1.0. It w asn’t
especially elegant, nor was it much different from those of rhesus
m onkeys, g ian t apes, or m any other anim als. B ut it served us nicely.
It worked w ell. U n til it d id n ’t.
As humans formed more complex societies, bum ping up against
strangers and needing to cooperate in order to get things done, an
operating system based p urely on the biological drive was inadequate.
In fact, sometim es we needed ways to restrain this drive— to prevent
me from sw iping your dinner and you from stealing m y spouse. And
so in a feat of rem arkable cultural engineering, we slow ly replaced
w hat we had w ith a version more com patible w ith how w e’d begun
w orking and livin g.
A t the core of this new and improved operating system was a
revised and more accurate assumption: H um ans are more than the
sum of our biological urges. That first drive s till m attered— no
doubt about that— but it d id n ’t fully account for who we are. W e
also had a second drive— to seek reward and avoid punishm ent more
broadly. A nd it was from this in sight that a new operating system —
call it M otivation 2.0— arose. (O f course, other anim als also respond
to rewards and punishm ents, but only humans have proved able
to channel this drive to develop everything from contract law to
convenience stores.)
18
Harnessing this second drive has been essential to economic progress

around the world, especially during the last two centuries. Consider the
Industrial Revolution. Technological developments— steam engines,
railroads, widespread electricity— played a crucial role in fostering the
growth of industry. B ut so did less tangible innovations— in particular,
the work of an American engineer named Frederick W inslow Taylor.
In the early 1900s, Taylor, who believed businesses were being run in
an inefficient, haphazard way, invented what he called “scientific man
agement." His invention was a form of “software” expertly crafted to
run atop the M otivation 2.0 platform. And it was w idely and quickly
adopted.
W orkers, this approach held, were lik e parts in a com plicated
m achine. If they did the righ t work in the rig h t w ay at the righ t
tim e, the m achine w ould function smoothly. And to ensure th at hap
pened, you sim p ly rewarded the behavior you sought and punished
the behavior you discouraged. People would respond ratio n ally to
these external forces— these extrinsic m otivators— and both they
and the system itself would flourish. W e tend to th in k that coal and
oil have powered economic developm ent. B ut in some sense, the
engine of commerce has been fueled equally by carrots and sticks.
The M otivation 2.0 operating system has endured for a very long
tim e. Indeed, it is so deeply embedded in our lives that m ost of us
scarcely recognize that it exists. For as long as any of us can rem em
ber, w e’ve configured our organizations and constructed our lives
around its bedrock assum ption: The w ay to improve performance,
increase productivity, and encourage excellence is to reward the good
and punish the bad.
Despite its greater sophistication and higher aspirations, M otiva
tion 2.0 still w asn’t exactly ennobling. It suggested that, in the end,
hum an beings aren’t m uch different from horses— that the w ay to
get us m oving in the rig h t direction is by d an glin g a crunchier carrot
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or w ield in g a sharper stick. But what this operating system lacked

in enlightenm ent, it m ade up for in effectiveness. It worked w ell—
extrem ely w ell. U n til it d id n ’t.
As the tw entieth century progressed, as economies grew still
more com plex, and as the people in them had to deploy new, more
sophisticated skills, the M otivation 2.0 approach encountered some
resistance. In the 1950s, Abraham Maslow, a former student of
H arry H arlow ’s at the U niversity of W isconsin, developed the field
of hum anistic psychology, which questioned the idea that hum an
behavior was purely the ratlike seeking of positive stim uli and
avoidance of negative stim u li. In I9 6 0 , M IT m anagem ent professor
Douglas M cG regor im ported some of M aslow ’s ideas to the business
world. M cG regor challenged the presum ption that hum ans are fun
d am en tally inert— that absent external rewards and punishm ents,
we w ouldn’t do much. People have other, h igh er drives, he said. And
these drives could benefit businesses if m anagers and business leaders
respected them . Thanks in part to M cG regor’s w ritin g , companies
evolved a bit. Dress codes relaxed, schedules became more flexible.
M any organizations looked for ways to gran t em ployees greater
autonom y and to help them grow. These refinements repaired some
weaknesses, but they am ounted to a m odest im provem ent rather
than a thorough upgrade— M otivation 2.1.
And so this general approach rem ained intact— because it was,
after all, easy to understand, sim ple to m onitor, and straightforw ard
to enforce. B ut in the first ten years of this century— a period of
tru ly staggerin g underachievem ent in business, technology, and
social progress— w e’ve discovered that this sturdy, old operating sys
tem doesn’t work nearly as w ell. It crashes— often and unpredictably.
It forces people to devise workarounds to bypass its flaws. Most of
a ll, it is proving incom patible w ith m any aspects of contemporary
20
T h e R i s e a n d F al l o f M o t i v a t i o n 2. 0
business. And if we exam ine those in co m p atib ility problems closely,

w e’ll realize that modest updates— a patch here or there— w ill not
solve the problem . W h at we need is a full-scale upgrade.
THREE IN C O M PA TIB ILIT Y PROBLEM S
f\ /I otivation 2.0 s till serves some purposes w ell. It's just deeply
s V I unreliable. Som etim es it works; m any tim es it doesn’t. And
understanding its defects w ill help determ ine w hich parts to keep
and which to discard as we fashion an upgrade. The glitch es fall into
three broad categories. O ur current operating system has become far
less com patible w ith , and at tim es dow nright antagonistic to: how
we organ iz e w hat we do; how we think about what we do; and how we
do w hat we do.
H o w We O rganize W h a t We Do
Go back to that encyclopedic showdown between M icrosoft and

W ikip ed ia. The assum ptions at the heart of M otivation 2.0 suggest
that such a result shouldn’t even be possible. W ik ip ed ia’s trium ph
seems to defy the laws of behavioral physics.
Now, if this all-volunteer, all-am ateur encyclopedia were the only
instance of its kind, we m ig h t dism iss it as an aberration, an excep
tion that proves the rule. B ut it ’s not. Instead, W ikip ed ia represents
the most powerful new business model of the tw enty-first century:
open source.
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Fire up your home computer, for exam ple. W h en you visit the
W eb to check the weather forecast or order some sneakers, you m ig h t
be using Firefox, a free open-source W eb browser created alm ost
exclusively by volunteers around the world. U npaid laborers who
give away their product? T hat couldn’t be sustainable. The incentives
are all wrong. Yet Firefox now has more than 150 m illio n users.
Or w alk into the IT departm ent of a large com pany anywhere
in the w orld and ask for a tour. That com pany’s corporate com puter
servers could w ell run on Linux, software devised by an arm y of
unpaid program m ers and available for free. Linux now powers one
in four corporate servers. Then ask an em ployee to explain how the
com pany’s w ebsite works. H um m ing beneath the site is probably
Apache, free open-source W eb server software created and m ain
tained by a far-flung global group of volunteers. Apache’s share of the
corporate W eb server m arket: 52 percent. In other words, companies
th at typ ically rely on external rewards to m anage th eir employees
run some of their most im portant systems w ith products created by
nonemployees who don’t seem to need such rewards.
And it ’s not just the tens of thousands of software projects across
the globe. Today you can find: open-source cookbooks; open-source
textbooks; open-source car design; open-source m edical research;
open-source legal briefs; open-source stock photography; open-source
prosthetics; open-source credit unions; open-source cola; and for
those for whom soft drinks won’t suffice, open-source beer.
This new way of organizing what we do doesn’t banish extrinsic
rewards. People in the open-source m ovement haven’t taken vows
of poverty. For many, participation in these projects can burnish
their reputations and sharpen their skills, w hich can enhance their
earning power. Entrepreneurs have launched new, and sometimes
lucrative, companies to help organizations im plem ent and m aintain
open-source software applications.
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T h e Ri s e a n d Fal l o f M o t i v a t i o n 2. 0
B ut ultim ately, open source depends on intrinsic m otivation

w ith the same ferocity th at older business models rely on extrin
sic m otivation, as several scholars have shown. M IT m anagem ent
professor K arim Lakhani and Boston C onsulting Group consultant
Bob W o lf surveyed 684 open-source developers, m ostly in N orth
A m erica and Europe, about w hy they p articipated in these projects.
Lakhani and W o lf uncovered a range of m otives, but they found
“that enjoym ent-based in trin sic m otivation, nam ely how creative a
person feels when w orking on the project, is the strongest and most
pervasive driver.”2 A large m ajo rity of program m ers, the research
ers discovered, reported that they frequently reached the state of
optim al challenge called “flow.” Likew ise, three Germ an economists
who studied open-source projects around the world found that what
drives participants is “a set of predom inantly intrinsic m otives”—
in particular, “the fun . . . of m astering the challenge of a given
software problem ” and the “desire to give a g ift to the program
m er com m unity.”3 M otivation 2.0 has little room for these sorts of
im pulses.
W h a t’s more, open source is only one w ay people are restructur
in g w hat they do along new organizational lines and atop different
m otivational ground. Let’s move from software code to the legal code.
The laws in most developed countries perm it essentially two types
of business organizations— profit and nonprofit. One makes money,
the other does good. And the m ost prom inent m em ber of th at first
category is the p u b licly held corporation— owned by shareholders
and run by m anagers who are overseen by a board of directors. The
m anagers and directors bear one overriding responsibility: to m axi
m ize shareholder gain. O ther types of business organizations steer by
the same rules of the road. In the U nited States, for instance, partner
ships, S corporations, С corporations, lim ited lia b ility companies,
and other business configurations all aim toward a common end. The
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objective of those who run them — practically, legally, in some ways

m orally— is to m axim ize profit.
Let me give a rousing, heartfelt, and grateful cheer for these busi
ness forms and the farsighted countries th at enable their citizens to
create them . W ith o ut them , our lives w ould be infinitely less pros
perous, less healthy, and less happy. B ut in the last few years, several
people around the world have been changing the recipe and cooking
up new varieties of business organizations.
For exam ple, in A pril 2008, Vermont became the first U .S. state
to allow a new type of business called the “low-profit lim ited lia
b ility corporation.” Dubbed an L3C, this en tity is a corporation—
b ut not as we typ ically th ink of it. As one report explained, an L3C
“operate[s] lik e a for-profit business generating at least modest prof
its, but its prim ary aim [is] to offer significant social benefits.” Three
other U .S. states have followed Verm ont’s lead.4 An L3C in North
Carolina, for instance, is b uyin g abandoned furniture factories in the
state, updating them w ith green technology, and leasing them back
to beleaguered furniture m anufacturers at a low rate. The venture
hopes to m ake money, but its real purpose is to help revitalize a
stru g g lin g region.
M eanw hile, Nobel Peace Prize w inner M uham m ad Yunus has
begun creating w hat he calls “social businesses.” These are compa
nies that raise capital, develop products, and sell them in an open
m arket but do so in the service of a larger social m ission— or as he
puts it, “w ith the profit-m axim ization principle replaced by the
social-benefit p rin cip le.” The Fourth Sector N etw ork in the U nited
States and Denmark is prom oting “the for-benefit organization”— a
hybrid that it says represents a new category of organization that is
both econom ically self-sustaining and anim ated by a public purpose.
One exam ple: M ozilla, the en tity that gave us Firefox, is organized
24
as a “for-benefit” organization. And three U.S. entrepreneurs have

invented the “B Corporation,” a designation that requires companies
to am end their bylaws so that the incentives favor long-term value
and social im pact instead of short-term economic g a in .5
N either open-source production nor previously unim agined “not
only for profit” businesses are yet the norm, of course. And they
won’t consign the p ub lic corporation to the trash heap. B ut their
em ergence tells us som ething im portant about where w e’re head
ing. “There’s a b ig movem ent out there that is not yet recognized as
a m ovem ent,” a law yer who specializes in for-benefit organizations
told T he N ew York Times.6 One reason could be that tradition al busi
nesses are profit m axim izers, w hich square perfectly w ith M otivation
2.0. These new entities are purpose m axim izers— which are unsuited to
this older operating system because they flout its very principles.
H o w We T h i n k A b o u t W h a t We Do
W hen I took m y first economics course back in the early 1980s, our
professor— a b rillian t lecturer w ith a Patton-like stage presence—
offered an im portant clarification before she’d chalked her first in dif
ference curve on the blackboard. Economics, she explained, w asn’t
the study of money. It was the study of behavior. In the course of
a day, each of us was constantly figuring the cost and benefits of
our actions and then d eciding how to act. Economists studied what
people did, rather than w hat we said, because we did w hat was best
for us. W e were rational calculators of our economic self-interest.
W h en I studied law a few years later, a sim ilar idea reappeared.
The new ly ascendant field of “law and economics” held that precisely
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because we were such awesome self-interest calculators, laws and

regulations often im peded, rather than perm itted, sensible and just
outcomes. I survived law school in no sm all part because I discovered
the talism anic phrase and offered it on exams: “In a world of perfect
inform ation and low transaction costs, the parties w ill bargain to a
w ealth-m axim izing resu lt.”
Then, about a decade later, came a curious turn of events that
m ade me question m uch of w hat I’d worked hard, and taken on enor
mous debt, to learn. In 2002, the N obel Foundation awarded its
prize in economics to a g u y who w asn’t even an economist. And
they gave him the field’s highest honor largely for revealing that we
w eren ’t alw ays rational calculators of our economic self-interest and
that the parties often d id n 't bargain to a w ealth-m axim izing result.
D aniel Kahnem an, an Am erican psychologist who won the Nobel
Prize in economics that year for work he’d done w ith Israeli Amos
Tversky, helped force a change in how we th in k about what we do.
And one of the im plications of this new w ay of th in k in g is th at it
calls into question m any of the assum ptions of M otivation 2.0.
Kahneman and others in the field of behavioral economics agreed
w ith m y professor that economics was the study of hum an economic
behavior. They just believed that we’d placed too m uch em phasis
on the econom ic and not enough on the hum an. T hat hyperrational
calculator-brained person wasn’t real. H e was a convenient fiction.
Play a gam e w ith me and I’ll try to illustrate the point. Suppose
somebody gives me ten dollars and tells me to share it— some, all,
or none— w ith you. If you accept my offer, we both get to keep the
money. If you reject it, neither of us gets an ything. If I offered you
six dollars (keeping four for m yself), w ould you take it? Alm ost cer
tainly. If I offered you five, you’d probably take that, too. B ut w hat if
I offered you two dollars? W ould you take it? In an experim ent rep
26
licated around the w orld, most people rejected offers of two dollars
and below.7 T hat makes no sense in terms of w ealth m axim ization.
If you take m y offer of two dollars, you’re two dollars richer. If you
reject it, you get nothing. Your cognitive calculator knows two is
greater than zero— but because yo u’re a hum an being, your notions
of fair p lay or your desire for revenge or your sim ple irritatio n over
rides it.
In real life our behavior is far more complex than the textbook
allows and often confounds the idea that w e’re purely rational.
W e don’t save enough for retirem ent even though it ’s to our clear
economic advantage to do so. W e hang on to bad investm ents lon
ger than we should, because we feel far sharper pain from losing
m oney than we do from g ain in g the exact same am ount. Give us
a choice of two television sets, w e’ll p ick one; toss in an irrelevant
third choice, and w e’ll p ick the other. In short, we are irrational—
and predictably so, says economist Dan A riely, author of P redictably
Irra tion a l, a book that offers an en tertaining and en gagin g overview
of behavioral economics.
The trouble for our purposes is that M otivation 2.0 assumes w e’re
the same robotic w ealth-m axim izers I was taugh t we were a couple of
decades ago. Indeed, the very prem ise of extrinsic incentives is that
w e’ll always respond ratio n ally to them . B ut even most economists
don’t believe that anymore. Som etim es these m otivators work. Often
they don’t. And m any tim es, they inflict collateral dam age. In short,
the new way economists th in k about w hat we do is hard to reconcile
w ith M otivation 2.0.
W h a t’s more, if people do things for lunk-headed, backward-
looking reasons, w hy w ouldn’t we also do things for significance-
seeking, self-actualizing reasons? If w e’re predictably irrational— and
we clearly are— w hy couldn’t we also be predictably transcendent?
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If that seems far-fetched, consider some of our other bizarre behav

iors. W e leave lucrative jobs to take low -paying ones that provide a
clearer sense of purpose. W e work to m aster the clarinet on w eek
ends although we have little hope of m aking a dim e (M otivation 2.0)
or acquirin g a m ate (M otivation 1.0) from doing so. W e play w ith
puzzles even when we don’t get a few raisins or dollars for solving
them .
Some scholars are already w idening the reach of behavioral eco
nomics to encompass these ideas. The m ost prom inent is Bruno
Frey, an economist at the U niversity of Zurich. Like the behavioral
economists, he has argued that we need to move beyond the idea of
Homo Oeconomicus (Economic M an, that fictional w ealth -m axim izing
robot). B ut his extension goes in a slig h tly different direction— to
w hat he calls Homo Oeconomicus M aturus (or M ature Economic Man).
This figure, he says, “is more ‘m ature’ in the sense th at he is endowed
w ith a more refined m otivational structure.” In other words, to fully
understand hum an economic behavior, we have to come to terms
w ith an idea at odds w ith M otivation 2.0. As Frey w rites, “In trin
sic m otivation is of g r ea t im portance for all economic activities. It is
inconceivable that people are m otivated solely or even m ain ly by
external incentives.”8
H o w We Do W h a t We Do
If you m anage other people, take a quick glance over your shoul
der. T here’s a ghost hovering there. H is nam e is Frederick W inslow
Taylor— remember him from earlier in the chapter?— and he’s w his
pering in your ear. “W o rk,” Taylor is m urm urin g, “consists m ain ly
28
of sim ple, not p articu larly in terestin g, tasks. The only w ay to get
people to do them is to incentivize them properly and m onitor them
carefully.” In the early 1900s, Taylor had a point. Today, in m uch of
the w orld, th a t’s less true. Yes, for some people work rem ains routine,
u n ch allen gin g, and directed by others. B ut for a su rp risin gly large
num ber of people, jobs have become more com plex, more interest
in g , and more self-directed. And that type of work presents a direct
challenge to the assum ptions of M otivation 2.0.
B egin w ith com plexity. Behavioral scientists often divide what
we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: “algo rith
m ic” and “h eu ristic.” A n algo rithm ic task is one in w hich you fol
low a set of established instructions down a sin gle pathw ay to one
conclusion. T hat is, there’s an algorithm for solving it. A heuristic
task is the opposite. Precisely because no algo rithm exists for it, you
have to experim ent w ith possibilities and devise a novel solution.
W orking as a grocery checkout clerk is m ostly algo rithm ic. You do
p retty m uch the same th in g over and over in a certain way. Creat
in g an ad cam paign is m ostly heuristic. You have to come up w ith
som ething new.
D uring the tw entieth century, most work was algo rithm ic— and
not just jobs where you turned the same screw the same way all day
long. Even when we traded blue collars for w h ite, the tasks we car
ried out were often routine. T hat is, we could reduce m uch of what
we d id — in accounting, law, com puter program m ing, and other
fields— to a script, a spec sheet, a form ula, or a series of steps that
produced a rig h t answer. B ut today, in m uch of N orth A m erica, W est
ern Europe, Jap an , South Korea, and A ustralia, routine w hite-collar
work is disappearing. I t’s racing offshore to wherever it can be done
the cheapest. In India, B ulgaria, the Philippines, and other coun
tries, lower-paid workers essentially run the algo rithm , figure out
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the correct answer, and deliver it instantaneously from their com

puter to someone six thousand m iles away.
B ut offshoring is just one pressure on rule-based, left-brain work.
Ju s t as oxen and then forklifts replaced sim ple physical labor, com
puters are replacing sim ple intellectual labor. So w h ile outsourcing
is just b eginning to p ick up speed, software can already perform
m any rule-based, professional functions better, more quickly, and
more cheaply than we can. T hat means that your cousin the CPA,
if he’s doing m ostly routine work, faces com petition not just from
five-hundred-dollar-a-m onth accountants in M anila, but from tax
preparation program s anyone can download for th irty dollars. The
consulting firm M cK insey & Co. estim ates that in the U nited States,
only 30 percent of job grow th now comes from algorithm ic work,
w h ile 70 percent comes from heuristic w ork.9 A key reason: R outine
work can be outsourced or autom ated; artistic, em pathic, nonroutine
work generally cannot.10
The im plications for m otivation are vast. Researchers such as
H arvard Business School’s Teresa A m abile have found that external
rewards and punishm ents— both carrots and sticks— can work nicely
for algorithm ic tasks. B ut they can be devastating for heuristic ones.
Those sorts of challenges— solving novel problems or creating some
th in g the world d id n ’t know it was m issing— depend heavily on
H arlow ’s third drive. A m abile calls it the intrinsic m otivation p rin
ciple of creativity, w hich holds, in part: “Intrinsic m otivation is con
ducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic m otivation is detrim ental
to creativity.”11 In other words, the central tenets of M otivation 2.0
m ay actually im pair performance of the heuristic, righ t-b rain work
on which modern economies depend.
Partly because work has become more creative and less routine,
it has also become more enjoyable. T hat, too, scram bles M otivation
2 .0 ’s assumptions. This operating system rests on the belief that
30
T h e R i s e a n d Fal l o f M o t i v a t i o n 2. 0
w ork is not inherently enjoyable— which is precisely why we m ust

coax people w ith external rewards and threaten them w ith outside
punishm ent. One unexpected finding of the psychologist M ihaly
C sikszentm ihalyi, whom w e’ll encounter in Chapter 5, is th at peo
ple are m uch more lik e ly to report having “optim al experiences” on
the job than durin g leisure. B ut if work is inherently enjoyable for
more and more people, then the external inducem ents at the heart
of M otivation 2.0 become less necessary. W orse, as Deci began d is
covering forty years ago, adding certain kinds of extrinsic rewards on
top of inherently interesting tasks can often dam pen m otivation and
dim in ish performance.
Once again, certain bedrock notions suddenly seem less sturdy.
Take the curious exam ple of Vocation Vacations. This is a business
in w hich people pay th eir hard-earned money . . . to work at another
job. They use their vacation tim e to test-drive being a chef, running a
bike shop, or operating an anim al shelter. The em ergence of this and
sim ilar ventures suggests that w ork, which economists have always
considered a “d is u tility ” (som ething w e’d avoid unless we received a
paym ent in return), is becom ing a “u tility ” (som ething w e’d pursue
even in the absence of a tangib le return).
Finally, because work is supposed to be dreary, M otivation 2.0
holds that people need to be carefully m onitored so they don’t shirk.
This idea, too, is becom ing less relevant and, in m any w ays, less pos
sible. Consider, for instance, that A m erica alone now has more than
18 m illio n of w hat the U .S. Census Bureau calls “non-em ployer
businesses”— businesses w ithout any paid employees. Since people in
these businesses don’t have any underlings, they don’t have anybody
to m anage or m otivate. B ut since they don’t have bosses them selves,
there’s nobody to m anage or m otivate them . They have to be self
directed.
So do people who aren’t technically w orking for themselves. In
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the U nited States, 33.7 m illio n people telecom m ute at least one day
a m onth, and 14.7 m illio n do so every day— p lacin g a substantial
portion of the workforce beyond the gaze of a m anager, forcing them
to direct th eir own w o rk.12 And even if m any organizations haven’t
opted for measures lik e these, th ey’re generally becom ing leaner
and less hierarchical. In an effort to reduce costs, they trim the fatty
m iddle. T hat means m anagers oversee larger num bers of people and
therefore scrutinize each one less closely.
As organizations flatten, companies need people who are self
m otivated. T hat forces m any organizations to become more lik e, er,
W ikip ed ia. Nobody “m anages” the W ikipedians. Nobody sits around
tryin g to figure out how to “m otivate” them . T h at’s w hy W ikip ed ia
works. R outine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; non
routine, more interesting w ork depends on self-direction. One b usi
ness leader, who d id n ’t w ant to be identified, said it plainly. W h en he
conducts job interview s, he tells prospective em ployees: “If you need
m e to m otivate you, I probably don’t w ant to hire yo u .”
To r e c a p , M otivation 2.0 suffers from three co m p atib ility prob

lem s. It doesn’t mesh w ith the way m any new business models are
organizing w hat we do— because w e’re in trin sically m otivated pur
pose m axim izers, not only extrinsically m otivated profit m axim izers.
It doesn’t comport w ith the w ay that tw enty-first-century economics
thinks about w hat we do— because economists are finally realizing
th at w e’re full-fledged hum an beings, not single-m inded economic
robots. And perhaps m ost im portant, i t ’s hard to reconcile w ith
m uch of w hat we actu ally do at work— because for grow in g num
bers of people, work is often creative, in terestin g, and self-directed
rather than u n relen tin gly routine, boring, and other-directed. Taken
32
together, these co m patib ility problem s w arn us that som ething’s

gone aw ry in our m otivational operating system.
B ut in order to figure out exactly w hat, and as an essential
step in fashioning a new one, we need to take a look at the bugs
them selves.
33
CHAPTER 2
Seven Reasons C ar r o t s and Sticks

(Of t en) D o n ' t W o r k . . .
Л n object in m otion w ill sta y in motion, a n d a n object a t rest w ill sta y a t

/ 1 rest, unless a cted on by an outside force.
T h at’s N ew ton’s first law of motion. Like N ew ton’s other laws,
this one is elegant and sim ple— which is part of its power. Even peo
p le lik e m e, who bum bled though high school physics, can under
stand it and can use it to interpret the world.
M otivation 2.0 is sim ilar. A t its heart are two elegant and sim ple
ideas:
R ew a rd in g an a ctiv ity w ill g e t you more o f it. P u n ish in g a n a ctiv ity

w ill g e t y o u less o f it.
A nd just as N ew ton’s principles can help us explain our physical

environm ent or chart the path of a thrown b all, M otivation 2 .0 ’s
Seven Reasons Ca rrots and Sticks (Often) Don't W ork
principles can help us comprehend our social surroundings and pre

dict the trajectory of hum an behavior.
B ut N ew tonian physics runs into problems at the subatom ic
level. Down there— in the land of hadrons, quarks, and Schroding-
er’s cat— things get freaky. The cool ratio n ality of Isaac N ewton
gives w ay to the bizarre un p red ictability of Lewis Carroll. M o ti
vation 2.0 is sim ilar in this regard, too. W hen rewards and pun
ishm ents encounter our third drive, som ething akin to behavioral
quantum m echanics seems to take over and strange things begin to
happen.
O f course, the startin g point for any discussion of m otivation in
the w orkplace is a sim ple fact of life: People have to earn a livin g.
Salary, contract paym ents, some benefits, a few perks are w hat I call
“baseline rew ards.” If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or
equitab le, her focus w ill be on the unfairness of her situation and the
anxiety of her circum stance. You’ll get neither the p red ictab ility of
extrinsic m otivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic m otivation. You’ll
get very little m otivation at all.
B ut once w e’re past that threshold, carrots and sticks can achieve
precisely the opposite of their intended aim s. M echanism s designed
to increase m otivation can dam pen it. Tactics aim ed at boosting cre
ativ ity can reduce it. Program s to promote good deeds can make
them disappear. M eanw hile, instead of restraining negative behavior,
rewards and punishm ents can often set it loose— and give rise to
cheating, addiction, and dangerously m yopic th in kin g.
This is weird. And it doesn’t hold in all circum stances (about
w hich more after this chapter). B ut as Edward D eci’s Soma puzzle
experim ent dem onstrates, m any practices whose effectiveness we
take for granted produce counterintuitive results: They can give us
less of w hat we w ant— and more of w hat we don’t want. These are
the bugs in M otivation 2.0. And they rise to the surface whether
35
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w e’re prom ising rupees in India, charging shekels in Israel, draw ing
blood in Sweden, or p ain tin g portraits in Chicago.
L E S S OF W H A T WE W A N T
if I ne of the most enduring scenes in A m erican literature offers an

Х-/ im portant lesson in hum an m otivation. In Chapter 2 of M ark
T w ain’s T he A dventures o f Tom S aw yer, Tom faces the dreary task of
w hitew ashing A unt P o lly’s 810-square-foot fence. H e’s not exactly
th rilled w ith the assignm ent. “Life to him seemed hollow, and exis
tence but a burden,” Twain writes.
B ut just when Tom has nearly lost hope, “nothing less than a
great, m agnificent inspiration” bursts upon him . W h en his friend
Ben am bles by and mocks Tom for his sorry lot, Tom acts confused.
Slapping p ain t on a fence isn ’t a grim chore, he says. I t’s a fantastic
p rivilege— a source of, ahem , intrinsic m otivation. The job is so cap
tivatin g that when Ben asks to try a few brushstrokes him self, Tom
refuses. He doesn’t relent u n til Ben gives up his apple in exchange
for the opportunity.
Soon more boys arrive, all of whom tum ble into Tom’s trap and
end up w hitew ashing the fence— several tim es over— on his behalf.
From this episode, Twain extracts a key m otivational principle,
nam ely “that W ork consists of whatever a body is o b l ig e d to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” He
goes on to w rite:
There are w ealthy gentlem en in England who drive four-horse

passenger-coaches tw enty or th irty m iles on a d aily lin e, in the
sum mer, because the privilege costs them considerable money;
36
Seven Reasons Carr ot s and Sticks (Often) Don't W o r k
but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn
it into work and then they w ould resign .1
In other words, rewards can perform a w eird sort of behavioral

alchem y: They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They
can turn p lay into work. And by d im in ish in g intrinsic m otivation,
they can send performance, creativity, and even upstanding behavior
toppling lik e dominoes. Let’s call this the Sawyer Effect.* A sam
p lin g of in trig u in g experim ents around the world reveals the four
realm s where this effect kicks in— and shows yet again the m ism atch
between w hat science knows and w hat business does.
In t r in s ic M o ti v a ti o n
Behavioral scientists lik e Deci began discovering the Sawyer Effect

nearly forty years ago, although they d id n ’t use that term . Instead,
they referred to the counterintuitive consequences of extrinsic incen
tives as “the hidden costs of rew ards.” T hat, in fact, was the title
of the first book on the subject— a 1978 research volum e that was
edited by psychologists M ark Lepper and D avid Greene.
One of Lepper and G reene’s early studies (w hich they carried out
w ith a third colleague, Robert N isbett) has become a classic in the
field and am ong the most cited articles in the m otivation literature.
The three researchers watched a classroom of preschoolers for several
days and identified the children who chose to spend their “free p lay”
tim e draw ing. Then they fashioned an experim ent to test the effect
of rew arding an activity these children clearly enjoyed.
*H er e ’s the tw o-sided defin itio n of the S aw yer Effect: p ractices th at can e ith e r tu rn p lay in to w ork
or tu rn work in to play.
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DRIVE
The researchers divided the children into three groups. The first
was the “expected-aw ard” group. They showed each of these children
a “Good P layer” certificate— adorned w ith a blue ribbon and featur
in g the c h ild ’s name— and asked if the ch ild wanted to draw in order
to receive the award. The second group was the “unexpected-award”
group. Researchers asked these children sim p ly if they wanted to
draw. If they decided to, when the session ended, the researchers
handed each child one of the “Good P layer” certificates. The third
group was the “no-award” group. Researchers asked these children if
they wanted to draw, but neither prom ised them a certificate at the
b eginning nor gave them one at the end.
Two weeks later, back in th e classroom, teachers set out paper
and m arkers during the preschool’s free play period w hile the
researchers secretly observed the students. Children previously in the
“unexpected-aw ard” and “no-award” groups drew just as m uch, and
w ith the same relish, as they had before the experim ent. B ut children
in the first group— the ones who’d expected and then received an
award— showed m uch less interest and spent much less tim e draw
in g .2 The Sawyer Effect had taken hold. Even two weeks later, those
allu rin g prizes— so common in classrooms and cubicles— had turned
p lay into work.
To be clear, it w asn’t necessarily the rewards them selves that
dam pened the children’s interest. Rem em ber: W hen children d id n ’t
expect a reward, receiving one had little im pact on their intrinsic
m otivation. O nly con tin gen t rewards— if you do this, then you’ll get
th at— had the negative effect. W h y? “If-then” rewards require peo
ple to forfeit some of their autonomy. Like the gentlem en drivin g
carriages for money instead of fun, th ey’re no longer fu lly controlling
their lives. And that can spring a hole in the bottom of their m otiva
tional bucket, draining an activity of its enjoym ent.
Lepper and Greene replicated these results in several subsequent
38
Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don't Work
experim ents w ith children. As tim e went on, other researchers found
sim ilar results w ith adults. Over and over again , they discovered
that extrinsic rewards— in particular, contingent, expected, “if-th en ”
rewards— snuffed out the third drive.
These insights proved so controversial— after all, they called into
question a standard practice of most companies and schools— that
in 1999 Deci and two colleagues reanalyzed nearly three decades of
studies on the subject to confirm the findings. “Careful consideration
of reward effects reported in 128 experim ents lead to the conclu
sion that tangib le rewards tend to have a sub stan tially negative effect
on intrinsic m otivation,” they determ ined. “W h en in stitutio ns—
fam ilies, schools, businesses, and athletic teams, for exam ple— focus
on the short-term and opt for controlling people’s behavior,” they do
considerable long-term dam age.3
Try to encourage a kid to learn m ath by paying her for each work
book page she completes— and she’ll alm ost certainly become more
d ilig en t in the short term and lose interest in m ath in the long term.
Take an industrial designer who loves his work and try to get him to
do better by m aking his pay contingent on a h it product— and he’ll
alm ost certainly work lik e a m aniac in the short term , but become
less interested in his job in the long term . As one leading behavioral
science textbook puts it, “People use rewards expecting to gain the
benefit of increasing another person’s m otivation and behavior, but in
so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of under
m in in g that person’s intrinsic m otivation toward the activity.”4
This is one of the most robust findings in social science— and
also one of the most ignored. D espite the work of a few skilled and
passionate popularizers— in particular, Alfie Kohn, whose prescient
1993 book, P u n ish ed by R ew ards, lays out a devastating indictm ent
of extrinsic incentives— we persist in tryin g to m otivate people this
way. Perhaps w e’re scared to let go of M otivation 2.0, despite its
39
DRIVE
obvious downsides. Perhaps we can’t get our m inds around the pecu
lia r quantum mechanics of intrinsic m otivation.
Or perhaps there’s a better reason. Even if those controlling
“if-th en ” rewards activate the Sawyer Effect and suffocate the third
drive, m aybe they actually g et people to perform better. If th at’s the
case, perhaps th ey’re not so bad. So le t’s ask: Do extrinsic rewards
boost performance? Four economists went to India to find out.
High P e r f o r m a n c e
One of the difficulties of laboratory experim ents that test the im pact
of extrinsic motivators lik e cash is the cost. If you’re goin g to pay
people to perform, you have to pay them a m eaningful am ount. And
in the U nited States or Europe, where standards of liv in g are h igh ,
an in d iv id u ally m eaningful am ount m u ltip lied by dozens of p artici
pants can rack up unsustainably large bills for behavioral scientists.
In part to circum vent this problem , a quartet of economists—
in clud in g Dan Ariely, whom I m entioned in the last chapter— set up
shop in M adurai, India, to gauge the effects of extrinsic incentives on
performance. Because the cost of liv in g in rural India is much lower
than in N orth Am erica, the researchers could offer large rewards
w ithout breaking their own banks.
They recruited eighty-seven participants and asked them to
p lay several gam es— for exam ple, tossing tennis balls at a target,
unscram bling anagram s, recallin g a string of d ig its— that required
m otor skills, creativity, or concentration. To test the power of incen
tives, the experim enters offered three types of rewards for reaching
certain performance levels.
O ne-third of the participants could earn a sm all reward— 4 rupees
(at the tim e worth around 50 U.S. cents and equal to about a d ay’s
40
Seven Reasons Ca rr ot s and Sticks (Often) Don't W o r k
p ay in M adurai) for reaching their performance targets. O ne-third

could earn a m edium reward— 40 rupees (about $5, or two w eeks’
pay). And one-third could earn a very large reward— 400 rupees
(about $ 50, or nearly five m onths’ pay).
W h at happened? D id the size of the reward predict the q u ality ot
the performance?
Yes. B ut not in the way you m ight expect. As it turned out, the
people offered the m edium -sized bonus d id n ’t perform any better
than those offered the sm all one. And those in the 400-rupee super-
incentivized group? They fared worst of all. By nearly every m easure,
they lagged behind both the low -rew ard and m edium -rew ard p artic
ipants. R eporting the results for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston,
the researchers wrote, “In eigh t of the nine tasks we exam ined across
the three experim ents, h igher incentives led to w orse perform ance.”5
Let’s circle back to this conclusion for a m oment. Four
economists— two from MIT, one from Carnegie M ellon, and one from
the U niversity of Chicago— undertake research for the Federal Reserve
System , one of the most powerful economic actors in the world. But
instead of affirm ing a sim ple business principle— higher rewards lead
to higher performance— they seem to refute it. And i t ’s not just Am er
ican researchers reaching these counterintuitive conclusions. In 2009,
scholars at the London School of Economics— alm a m ater of eleven
Nobel laureates in economics— analyzed fifty-one studies of corporate
pay-for-performance plans. These economists’ conclusion: “W e find
that financial incentives . . . can result in a negative im pact on overall
perform ance.”6 On both sides of the A tlantic, the gap between what
science is learning and what business is doing is wide.
“M any existin g institutions provide very large incentives for
exactly the type of tasks we used here,” A riely and his colleagues
wrote. “Our results challenge [th at] assum ption. O ur experim ent
suggests . . . that one cannot assume that introducing or raising
41
DRIVE
incentives alw ays improves performance.” Indeed, in m any instances,

contingent incentives— th at cornerstone of how businesses attem pt
to m otivate em ployees— m ay be “a losing proposition.”
O f course, procrastinating w riters n o tw ithstanding, few of us
spend our w orking hours flingin g tennis balls or doing anagram s.
How about the more creative tasks that are more akin to w hat we
actu ally do on the job?
Creativity
For a quick test of problem -solving prowess, few exercises are more
useful than the “candle problem .” Devised by psychologist Karl
Duncker in the 1930s, the candle problem is used in a wide variety of
experim ents in behavioral science. Follow along and see how you do.
You sit at a table next to a wooden w all and the experim enter
gives you the m aterials shown below: a candle, some tacks, and a
book of m atches.
T he ca n d le p ro b lem p re s e n ted .
42
Seven Reasons Ca rrots and Sticks (Often) Don't Work
Your job is to attach the candle to the w all so that the wax doesn’t
drip on the table. T h in k for a m om ent about how you’d solve the
problem . M any people begin by tryin g to tack the candle to the
w all. B ut that doesn’t work. Some lig h t a m atch, m elt the side of
the candle, and try to adhere it to the w all. T hat doesn’t work either.
B ut after five or ten m inutes, most people stum ble onto the solution,
w hich you can see below.
T he ca n d le p ro b lem solved.
The key is to overcome w h at’s called “functional fixedness.” You

look at the box and see only one function— as a container for the
tacks. B ut by th in k in g afresh, you eventually see that the box can
have another function— as a platform for the candle. To reprise lan
guage from the previous chapter, the solution isn ’t algo rithm ic (fol
low ing a set path) but heuristic (breaking from the path to discover
a novel strategy).
W h at happens when you give people a conceptual challenge like
this and offer them rewards for speedy solutions? Sam G lucksberg, a
43
DRIVE
psychologist now at Princeton U niversity, tested this a few decades

ago by tim in g how q u ickly two groups of participants solved the
candle problem . He told the first group th at he was tim in g their
work m erely to establish norms for how long it typ ically took some
one to com plete this sort of puzzle. To the second group he offered
incentives. If a p articip an t’s tim e was am ong the fastest 25 percent
of all the people being tested, that participant w ould receive $5.
If the p articip an t’s tim e was the fastest of all, the reward would be
$20. A djusted for inflation, those are decent sums of money for a few
m inutes of effort— a nice motivator.
How m uch faster did the incentivized group come up w ith a solu
tion? On average, it took them nearly three and a h alf m inutes lo n ger:
Yes, three and a h alf m inutes longer. (W henever I’ve relayed these
results to a group of businesspeople, the reaction is alm ost alw ays a
loud, pained, involuntary gasp.) In direct contravention to the core
tenets of M otivation 2 .0 , an incentive designed to clarify th in k
in g and sharpen creativity ended up clouding th in k in g and d u llin g
creativity. W h y? Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus.
T h at’s helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution. They help us
stare ahead and race faster. B ut “if-then” m otivators are terrible for
challenges lik e the candle problem . As this experim ent shows, the
rewards narrowed people’s focus and blinkered the w ide view that
m ig h t have allowed them to see new uses for old objects.
Som ething sim ilar seems to occur for challenges th at aren’t so
m uch about cracking an existing problem but about iteratin g
som ething new. Teresa A m abile, the Harvard Business School pro
fessor and one of the w o rld’s leading researchers on creativity, has
frequently tested the effects of contingent rewards on the creative
process. In one study, she and two colleagues recruited tw enty-three
professional artists from the U nited States who had produced both
44
Seven Re asons Carr ots and Sticks (Oft en) Don't W or k
com missioned and noncommissioned artwork. They asked the artists

to random ly select ten commissioned works and ten noncommis
sioned works. Then A m abile and her team gave the works to a panel
of accom plished artists and curators, who knew nothing about the
study, and asked the experts to rate the pieces on creativity and tech
nical skill.
“O ur results were qu ite sta rtlin g ,” the researchers wrote. “The
com missioned works were rated as significantly less creative than
the non-commissioned works, yet they were not rated as different
in technical quality. Moreover, the artists reported feeling signifi
can tly more constrained when doing commissioned works than when
doing non-commissioned w orks.” One artist whom they interviewed
describes the Sawyer Effect in action:
N ot alw ays, but a lot of the tim e, when you are doing a piece
for someone else it becomes more “w ork” than joy. W h en I
work for m yself there is the pure joy of creating and I can
work through the n igh t and not even know it. On a com m is
sioned piece you have to check yourself— be careful to do what
the client w ants.8
Another study of artists over a longer period shows that a con

cern for outside rewards m ig h t actually hinder eventual success. In
the early 1960s, researchers surveyed sophomores and juniors at the
School of the A rt Institute of Chicago about their attitudes toward
work and w hether they were more in trin sically or extrin sically m oti
vated. U sin g these data as a benchm ark, another researcher followed
up w ith these students in the early 1980s to see how their careers
were progressing. Am ong the starkest findings, especially for men:
“The less evidence of extrinsic m otivation during art school, the more
45
DRIVE
success in professional art both several years after graduation and

nearly tw enty years later.” Painters and sculptors who were in trin si
cally m otivated, those for whom the joy of discovery and the ch al
lenge of creation were their own rewards, were able to weather the
tough tim es— and the lack of rem uneration and recognition— that
in evitab ly accompany artistic careers. And that led to yet another
paradox in the A lice in W onderland world of the third drive. “Those
artists who pursued their p ain tin g and sculpture more for the p lea
sure of the activ ity itse lf than for extrinsic rewards have produced art
that has been socially recognized as superior,” the study said. “It is
those who are least m otivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who even
tu ally receive th em .” 9
This result is not true across all tasks, of course. A m abile and oth
ers have found that extrinsic rewards can be effective for algorithm ic
tasks— those that depend on following an existing form ula to its
lo gical conclusion. B ut for more righ t-b rain undertakings— those
that dem and flexible problem -solving, inventiveness, or conceptual
understanding— contingent rewards can be dangerous. Rewarded
subjects often have a harder tim e seeing the periphery and crafting
o rigin al solutions. T his, too, is one of the sturdiest findings in social
science— especially as A m abile and others have refined it over the
years.10 For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest
of us, intrinsic m otivation— the drive to do som ething because it is
in terestin g, ch allen gin g, and absorbing— is essential for high lev
els of creativity. B ut the “if-then" m otivators that are the staple of
most businesses often stifle, rather than stir, creative th in k in g. As
the economy moves toward more righ t-b rain, conceptual work— as
more of us deal w ith our own versions of the candle problem — this
m ig h t be the most alarm ing gap between w hat science knows and
what business does.
46
Seven Reasons Carrot s and Sticks (Often) Don't W or k
Good B e h a v io r
Philosophers and m edical professionals have long debated whether

blood donors should be paid. Some claim that blood, lik e hum an
tissue or organs, is special— that we shouldn’t be able to buy and sell
it lik e a barrel of crude oil or a crate of ball bearings. Others argue
th at we should shelve our squeam ishness, because p ayin g for this
substance w ill ensure an am ple supply.
B ut in 1970, B ritish sociologist R ichard T itm uss, who had stud
ied blood donation in the U nited K ingdom , offered a bolder specu
lation. Paying for blood w asn’t just im m oral, he said. It was also
inefficient. If B ritain decided to pay citizens to donate, that would
actu ally reduce the country’s blood supply. It was an oddball notion,
to be sure. Economists snickered. And Titm uss never tested the idea;
it was m erely a philosophical h unch.11
B ut a quarter-century later, two Swedish economists decided to
see if Titm uss was righ t. In an in trig u in g field experim ent, they vis
ited a regional blood center in Gothenburg and found 153 women
who were interested in g iv in g blood. Then— as seems to be the cus
tom am ong m otivation researchers— they divided the women into
three groups.12 Experimenters told those in the first group that blood
donation was voluntary. These participants could give blood, but
they w ouldn’t receive a paym ent. The experim enters offered the sec
ond group a different arrangem ent. If these participants gave blood,
th ey’d each receive 50 Swedish kronor (about $7). The th ird group
received a variation on that second offer: a 50-kronor paym ent w ith
an im m ediate option to donate the am ount to a children’s cancer
charity.
O f the first group, 52 percent of the women decided to go ahead
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and donate blood. They were altruistic citizens apparently, w illin g

to do a good deed for th eir fellow Swedes even in the absence of
compensation.
A nd the second group? M otivation 2.0 would suggest that this
group m ig h t be a b it more m otivated to donate. T h ey’d shown up,
w hich indicated intrinsic m otivation. G ettin g a few kronor on top
m ig h t give that im pulse a boost. B ut— as you m ig h t have guessed
by now— th at’s not w hat happened. In this group, only 30 percent
of the women decided to give blood. Instead of increasing the num
ber of blood donors, offering to pay people d ecreased the num ber by
nearly half.
M eanw hile, the third group— which had the option of donating
the fee d irectly to charity— responded m uch the same as the first
group. Fifty-three percent became blood donors.*
T itm uss’s hunch m ig h t have been rig h t, after all. A ddin g a m on
etary incentive d id n ’t lead to more of the desired behavior. It led to
less. The reason: It tainted an altruistic act and “crowded out” the
in trin sic desire to do som ething good.u D oing good is w hat blood
donation is all about. It provides w hat the Am erican Red Cross bro
chures say is “a feeling that money can’t buy.” T h at’s w hy volun
tary blood donations invariably increase d urin g natural disasters and
other calam ities.14 B ut if governments were to pay people to help
their neighbors durin g these crises, donations m ig h t decline.
T hat said, in the Swedish exam ple, the reward itse lf w asn’t inher
en tly destructive. The im m ediate option to donate the 50-kronor
paym ent rather than pocket it seemed to negate the effect. T his, too,
is extrem ely im portant. I t’s not that all rewards at a ll tim es are bad.
For instance, when the Italian governm ent gave blood donors paid
*T h e resu lts for the 1 19 m en in the exp erim en t were som ew hat different. T he paym en t had no
s ta tis tic a lly sig n ifican t effect, p o sitive or n egative, on the d ecisio n to g iv e blood.
48
Seven Reasons Ca rrots and Sticks (Often) Don't W ork
tim e off work, donations increased.15 The law removed an obstacle

to altruism . So w h ile a few advocates would have you believe in the
basic evil of extrinsic incentives, th at’s just not em p irically true.
W h at is true is that m ixin g rewards w ith inherently in terestin g, cre
ative, or noble tasks— deploying them w ithout understanding the
p eculiar science of m otivation— is a very dangerous gam e. W hen
used in these situations, “if-th en ” rewards usually do more harm
than good. B y n eglectin g the ingredients of genuine m otivation—
autonomy, mastery, and purpose— they lim it w hat each of us can
achieve.
M O R E OF W H A T WE D O N ’ T W A N T
1 n the upside-down universe of the third drive, rewards can often

I produce less of the very things th ey’re tryin g to encourage. B ut
th at’s not the end of the story. W h en used im properly, extrinsic m oti
vators can have another unintended collateral consequence: They can
give us more of w hat we don’t want. Here, again , w hat business
does hasn’t caught up w ith w hat science knows. And w hat science is
revealing is that carrots and sticks can promote bad behavior, create
addiction, and encourage short-term th in k in g at the expense of the
long view.
U n e t h i c a l B e h av io r
W h at could be more valuable than having a goal? From our earliest

days, teachers, coaches, and parents advise us to set goals and to work
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m ig h tily to achieve them — and w ith good reason. Goals work. The
academ ic literature shows that by helping us tune out distractions,
goals can g e t us to try harder, work longer, and achieve more.
B ut recently a group of scholars from the H arvard Business
School, N orthwestern U niversity’s K ellogg School of M anagem ent,
the U niversity of A rizona’s Eller College of M anagem ent, and the
U niversity of Pennsylvania’s W harton School questioned the effi
cacy of this broad prescription. “R ather than being offered as an
‘over-the-counter’ salve for boosting performance, goal settin g should
be prescribed selectively, presented w ith a w arning lab el, and closely
m onitored,” they w ro te.16 Goals that people set for them selves and
that are devoted to attain in g mastery are usually healthy. B ut goals
imposed by others— sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized
test scores, and so on— can sometimes have dangerous side effects.
Like all extrinsic m otivators, goals narrow our focus. T h at’s one
reason they can be effective; they concentrate the m ind. B ut as -we’ve
seen, a narrowed focus exacts a cost. For com plex or conceptual tasks,
offering a reward can b lin ker the w ide-rangin g th in k in g necessary
to come up w ith an innovative solution. Likew ise, when an extrinsic
goal is param ount— p articularly a short-term , m easurable one whose
achievem ent delivers a b ig payoff— its presence can restrict our view
of the broader dim ensions of our behavior. As the cadre of business
school professors w rite, “Substantial evidence dem onstrates that in
additio n to m otivating constructive effort, goal settin g can induce
unethical behavior.”
The examples are legion, the researchers note. Sears imposes a
sales quota on its auto repair staff—and workers respond by over
charging customers and com pleting unnecessary repairs. Enron sets
lofty revenue goals— and the race to m eet them by any means pos
sible catalyzes the com pany’s collapse. Ford is so intent on producing
50
Seven Reasons Carr ot s and Sticks (Often) Don't W o r k
a certain car at a certain w eigh t at a certain price by a certain date

th at it om its safety checks and unleashes the dangerous Ford Pinto.
The problem w ith m aking an extrinsic reward the only destina
tion that m atters is that some people w ill choose the quickest route
there, even if it means takin g the low road.
Indeed, m ost of the scandals and m isbehavior that have seemed
endem ic to modern life involve shortcuts. Executives gam e their
quarterly earnings so they can snag a performance bonus. Secondary
school counselors doctor student transcripts so th eir seniors can get
into co llege.17 A thletes inject them selves w ith steroids to post better
num bers and trigg er lucrative performance bonuses.
Contrast that approach w ith behavior sparked by intrinsic m o ti
vation. W hen the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning,
d elig h tin g custom ers, doing one’s best— there are no shortcuts. The
only route to the destination is the high road. In some sense, i t ’s
im possible to act un eth ically because the person w ho’s disadvantaged
isn ’t a com petitor but yourself.
O f course, all goals are not created equal. And— let me em phasize
this point— goals and extrinsic rewards aren’t inherently corrupting.
B ut goals are more toxic than M otivation 2.0 recognizes. In fact, the
business school professors suggest they should come w ith their own
w arning label: G oals m ay cause system atic problem s f o r organizations due
to n a rrow ed focu s, u n eth ica l behavior, in creased risk tak ing, decrea sed coop
eration, a n d d ecreased in trin sic m otivation. Use ca re w h en a p p lyin g go a ls in
y o u r organization.
If carrots-as-goals som etim es encourage unw orthy behavior, then
sticks-as-punishm ent should be able to halt it, righ t? N ot so fast.
The third drive is less m echanistic and more surprising than that, as
two Israeli economists discovered at some day care centers.
In 2000, economists U ri Gneezy and Aldo R ustich in i studied a
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group of child care facilities in H aifa, Israel, for tw en ty w eeks.18 The

centers opened at 7:30 a .m . and closed at 4 :0 0 p .m . Parents had to
retrieve their children by the closing tim e or a teacher would have
to stay late.
D uring the first four weeks of the experim ent, the economists
recorded how m any parents arrived late each week. T hen, before the
fifth week, w ith the perm ission of the day care centers, they posted
the follow ing sign:
A N N O U N C E M E N T:
F in e f o r C o m in g L a t e
Aj- you a l l know, the o fficia l closin g tim e o f the d a y ca re center is

1600 every day. Since some paren ts have been com ing late, w e (w ith
th e a p p rova l o f the A uthority fo r P riva te D ay-C are C enters in Israel)
h ave d ecid ed to impose a fin e on paren ts w ho come la te to pick up th eir
children.
As o f next Sunday a fin e o f NS 10* w i l l be ch a rged every tim e a
c h ild is co llected a fter 1610. T his fin e w ill be ca lcu la ted m onthly, it
is to be p a id together w ith the regu la r m on thly paym ent.
Sincerely,
T he m an ager o f the d a y -ca re center
The theory underlying the fine, said Gneezy and R u stich in i, was
straightforw ard: “W hen negative consequences are imposed on a
behavior, they w ill produce a reduction of th at particular response.”
In other words, thwack the parents w ith a fine, and th ey’ll stop show
in g up late.
*T he tine w as per ch ild , so a p arent w ith tw o ch ild ren w o u ld have to pay tw e n ty Israeli shekels
(N S 20 ) for each instance o f tardiness. W h en the exp erim en t w as condu cted , ten Israeli shekels
w as e q u iv a len t to abou t three U .S. dollars.
52
Seven Reasons Ca rr ot s and Sticks (Often) Don't W or k
B ut th at’s not w hat happened. “After the introduction of the fine

we observed a steady increase in the num ber of parents com ing la te ,”
the economists wrote. “The rate finally settled, at a level that was
higher, and a lm ost tw ice as la rg e as the in itial one.”’9 And in language
rem iniscent of H arry H arlow ’s head scratching, they w rite that
the existin g literature d id n ’t account for such a result. Indeed, the
“po ssib ility of an increase in the behavior being punished was not
even considered.”
Up pops another bug in M otivation 2.0. One reason most par
ents showed up on tim e is th at they had a relationship w ith the
teachers— who, after a ll, were caring for their precious sons and
daughters— and wanted to treat them fairly. Parents had an intrinsic
desire to be scrupulous about punctuality. B ut the threat of a fine—
lik e the prom ise of the kronor in the blood experim ent— edged aside
that third drive. The fine shifted the parents’ decision from a partly
m oral obligation (be fair to m y k id s’ teachers) to a pure transaction
(I can buy extra tim e). There w asn’t room for both. The punishm ent
d id n ’t promote good behavior; it crowded it out.
A d d ic t i o n
If some scientists believe that “if-then” m otivators and other extrin

sic rewards resemble prescription drugs that carry p o ten tially dan
gerous side effects, others believe th ey’re more lik e illeg al drugs that
foster a deeper and more pernicious dependency. According to these
scholars, cash rewards and shiny trophies can provide a delicious jolt
of pleasure at first, but the feeling soon dissipates— and to keep it
alive, the recipient requires ever larger and more frequent doses.
The Russian economist Anton Suvorov has constructed an
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elaborate econometric m odel to dem onstrate this effect, configured

around w h at’s called “principal-agent theory.” T hink of the principal
as the motivator— the em ployer, the teacher, the parent. T hink of
the agent as the motivates— the em ployee, the student, the child. A
principal essentially tries to get the agent to do w hat the principal
w ants, w h ile the agent balances his own interests w ith whatever the
prin cip al is offering. U sing a blizzard of com plicated equations that
test a variety of scenarios between principal and agen t, Suvorov has
reached conclusions that m ake in tuitive sense to any parent who’s
tried to get her kids to em pty the garbage.
By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task
is undesirable. (If the task were desirable, the agent w ouldn’t need a
prod.) B ut that in itial sign al, and the reward that goes w ith it, forces
the principal onto a path th at’s difficult to leave. Offer too sm all a
reward and the agent won’t comply. B ut offer a reward th at’s enticing
enough to get the agent to act the first tim e, and the principal “is
doomed to give it again in the second.” T here’s no goin g back. Pay
your son to take out the trash— and you’ve p retty m uch guaranteed
the kid w ill never do it again for free. W h a t’s more, once the in itial
money buzz tapers off, yo u 'll lik ely have to increase the paym ent to
continue com pliance.
As Suvorov explains, “Rewards are addictive in th at once offered,
a contingent reward makes an agent expect it whenever a sim ilar
task is faced, which in turn compels the principal to use rewards
over and over ag ain .” And before long, the existin g reward m ay no
longer suffice. It w ill q u ickly feel less lik e a bonus and more lik e the
status quo— which then forces the principal to offer larger rewards to
achieve the same effect.20
This addictive pattern is not m erely blackboard theory. Brian
Knutson, then a neuroscientist at the N ational In stitute on Alcohol
54
Seven Reasons Ca rrots and Sticks (Often) Don't Work
A buse and Alcoholism , dem onstrated as much in an experim ent

using the brain scanning technique known as functional m agnetic
resonance im agin g (fM RI). He placed healthy volunteers into a g ian t
scanner to watch how their brains responded d urin g a gam e that
involved the prospect of either w inning or losing money. W hen par
ticipants knew they had a chance to w in cash, activation occurred in
the part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. T hat is, when the
participants anticipated g e ttin g a reward (but not when they an tici
pated losing one), a burst of the brain chem ical dopam ine surged
to this part of the brain. Knutson, who is now at Stanford U niver
sity, has found sim ilar results in subsequent studies where people
anticipated rewards. W h at makes this response interesting for our
purposes is that the same basic physiological process— this particular
brain chem ical surging to this particular part of the brain— is what
happens in addiction. The m echanism of most addictive drugs is to
send a fusillade of dopam ine to the nucleus accum bens. The feeling
d eligh ts, then dissipates, then dem ands another dose. In other words,
if we watch how people’s brains respond, prom ising them monetary
rewards and g iv in g them cocaine, nicotine, or am phetam ines look
d istu rb in g ly sim ilar.21 This could be one reason that p ayin g people
to stop sm oking often works in the short run. It replaces one (dan
gerous) addiction w ith another (more benign) one.
Rew ards’ addictive qualities can also distort decision-m aking.
Knutson has found that activation in the nucleus accumbens seems
to p redict “both risky choices and risk-seeking m istakes.” Get peo
p le fired up w ith the prospect of rewards, and instead of m aking
better decisions, as M otivation 2.0 hopes, they can actu ally make
worse ones. As Knutson w rites, “This m ay explain w hy casinos sur
round their guests w ith reward cues (e.g., inexpensive food, free
liquor, surprise gifts, potential jackpot prizes)— anticipation of
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rewards activates the [nucleus accumbens}, w hich m ay lead to an

increase in the likelihood of in dividuals sw itch in g from risk-averse
to risk-seeking behavior.”22
In short, w hile that dangled carrot isn ’t all bad in all circum
stances, in some instances it operates sim ilar to a rock of crack cocaine
and can induce behavior sim ilar to that found around the craps table
or roulette wheel— not exactly what we hope to achieve when we
“m o tivate” our team m ates and coworkers.
S h o rt- T e rm T h i n k i n g
T h in k back to the candle problem again. The incentivized p artici

pants performed worse than their counterparts because they were
so focused on the prize that they failed to glim p se a novel solution
on the periphery. Rewards, w e’ve seen, can lim it the breadth of our
th in k in g. B ut extrinsic motivators— especially tan g ib le, “if-then”
ones— can also reduce the depth of our th in k in g. They can focus our
sigh ts on only w h at’s im m ediately before us rather than w h at’s o f f in
the distance.
M any tim es a concentrated focus m akes sense. If your office
b u ild in g is on fire, you w ant to find an exit im m ediately rather than
ponder how to rew rite the zoning regulations. B ut in less dram atic
circum stances, fixating on an im m ediate reward can dam age per
formance over tim e. Indeed, w hat our earlier exam ples— unethical
actions and addictive behavior— have in common, perhaps more than
an yth in g else, is that th ey’re entirely short-term . A ddicts w ant the
quick fix regardless of the eventual harm. Cheaters w ant the quick
w in — regardless of the lastin g consequences.
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Seven Reasons Ca rr o ts and Sticks (Often) Don't W or k
Yet even when the behavior doesn’t devolve into shortcuts or

addiction, the near-term allure of rewards can be harm ful in the long
run. Consider p u b licly held companies. M any such companies have
existed for decades and hope to exist for decades more. B ut much
of w hat their executives and m iddle managers do each day is aim ed
sin gle-m in d ed ly at the corporation’s performance over the next three
months. A t these com panies, quarterly earnings are an obsession.
Executives devote substantial resources to m aking sure the earnings
come out just righ t. A nd they spend considerable tim e and brain
power offering guidance to stock analysts so that the m arket knows
w hat to expect and therefore responds favorably. This laser focus on
a narrow, near-term slice of corporate performance is understand
able. I t’s a rational response to stock m arkets that reward or p un
ish tin y blips in those num bers, w hich, in turn, affect executives’
compensation.
B ut companies pay a steep price for not extending their gaze
beyond the next quarter. Several researchers have found that com
panies that spend the most tim e offering guidance on quarterly
earnings deliver sign ifican tly lo w er long-term grow th rates than
companies that offer guidance less frequently. (One reason: The
earnings-obsessed companies typ ically invest less in research and
developm ent.)23 They successfully achieve their short-term goals, but
threaten the health of the com pany two or three years hence. As the
scholars who warned about goals gone w ild put it, “The very pres
ence of goals m ay lead em ployees to focus m yopically on short-term
gains and to lose sight of the potential devastating long-term effects
on the organization.”24
Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the economic calam ity
that gripped the world economy in 2008 and 2009- Each player in
the system focused only on the short-term reward— the buyer who
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w anted a house, the m ortgage broker who wanted a com mission, the
W all Street trader who wanted new securities to sell, the politician
who w anted a buoyant economy durin g reelection— and ignored
the long-term effects of th eir actions on them selves or others. W hen
the m usic stopped, the entire system nearly collapsed. This is the
nature of economic bubbles: W h at seems to be irrational exuberance
is u ltim ately a bad case of extrinsically m otivated m yopia.
By contrast, the elem ents of genuine m otivation th at we’ll explore
later, by their very nature, defy a short-term view. Take mastery. The
objective itse lf is inherently long-term because com plete mastery,
in a sense, is unattainable. Even Roger Federer, for instance, w ill
never fu lly "m aster” the gam e of tennis. B ut introducing an “if-then”
reward to help develop m astery usually backfires. T h at’s w hy school
children who are p aid to solve problems typ ically choose easier prob
lem s and therefore learn less.25 The short-term prize crowds out the
long-term learning.
In environm ents where extrinsic rewards are m ost salient, m any
people w ork only to the point that triggers the reward— and no fur
ther. So if students get a prize for reading three books, m any w on’t
p ick up a fourth, let alone em bark on a lifetim e of reading— just as
executives who hit their quarterly numbers often w on't boost earn
ings a penny more, let alone contem plate the long-term health of
th eir company. Likew ise, several studies show that p ayin g people
to exercise, stop sm oking, or take their m edicines produces ter
rific results at first— but the healthy behavior disappears once the
incentives are removed. However, when contingent rewards aren’t
involved, or when incentives are used w ith the proper deftness, per
formance improves and understanding deepens. Greatness and near
sightedness are incom patible. M eaningful achievem ent depends on
liftin g one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.
58
S ev e n Re a so n s C a r r o t s and Sticks ( O f t e n ) Don't W ork
C AR R O TS AND S TIC K S : The Seven Deadly Flaws
1. Th ey can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

2. Th ey can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.
59
CHAPTER 2A
. . . and t h e Special C i r c u m s t a n c e s
W h e n They Do
arrots and sticks aren’t all bad. If they were, M otivation 2.0
C w ould never have flourished so long or accom plished so m uch.
W h ile an operating system centered around rewards and punish
m ents has outlived its usefulness and b ad ly needs an upgrade, that
doesn’t mean we should scrap its every piece. Indeed, doing so would
run counter to the science. The scholars exploring hum an m otivation
have revealed not only the m any glitch es in the traditional approach,
but also the narrow band of circum stances in which carrots and sticks
do th eir jobs reasonably w ell.
The startin g point, of course, is to ensure that the baseline
rewards— w ages, salaries, benefits, and so on— are adequate and fair.
W ith o ut a healthy baseline, m otivation of any sort is difficult and
often im possible.
B ut once th at’s established, there are circum stances where it ’s okay
a n d t h e S p e c i a l C i r c u m s t a n c e s W h e n T h e y Do
to fall back on extrinsic m otivators. To understand w hat those cir

cum stances are, le t’s return to the candle problem . In his study, Sam
G lucksberg found th at the participants who were offered a cash prize
took longer to solve the problem than those w orking in a reward-free
environm ent. The reason, you’ll recall, is that the prospect of a prize
narrowed p articip an ts’ focus and lim ited their ab ility to see an inven
tive, nonobvious solution.
In the same experiment, Glucksberg presented a separate set of
participants w ith a sligh tly different version of the problem. Once
again, he told half of them he was tim in g their performance to collect
data— and the other half that those who posted the fastest times could
w in cash. B ut he altered things just a bit. Instead of givin g participants
a box full of tacks, he em ptied the tacks onto the desk as shown below.
T he ca n d le p ro b lem p r e s e n te d d iffe r e n tly .
Can you guess w hat happened?

This tim e, the participants vyin g for the reward solved the prob
lem fa s te r than th eir counterparts. W h y? B y rem oving the tacks
and d isp layin g the em pty box, G lucksberg essentially revealed the
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solution. He transformed a challenging righ t-b rain task into a rou

tine left-brain one. Since participants sim p ly had to race down an
obvious path, the carrot w aitin g for them at the finish line encour
aged them to gallop faster.
G lucksberg’s experim ent provides the first question you should
ask when contem plating external m otivators: Is the task a t h a n d rou
tin e? T hat is, does accom plishing it require follow ing a prescribed
set of rules to a specified end?
For routine tasks, which aren’t very interesting and don’t demand
m uch creative th in k in g, rewards can provide a sm all m otivational
booster shot w ithout the harm ful side effects. In some w ays, th at’s
just common sense. As Edward Deci, R ichard R yan, and R ichard
Koestner explain, “Rewards do not underm ine people’s intrinsic
m otivation for d ull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic m oti
vation to be underm ined.”1 Likewise, when Dan A riely and his col
leagues conducted their M adurai, India, performance study w ith a
group of M IT students, they found that when the task called for
“even rudim entary cognitive s k ill,” a larger reward “led to poorer
perform ance.” B ut “as long as the task involved only m echanical
sk ill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the h igher the pay,
the better the perform ance.”2
This is extrem ely im portant. A lthough advanced economies now
revolve less around those algo rithm ic, rule-based functions, some of
w hat we do each day— especially on the job— still isn ’t all that in ter
esting. W e have TPS reports to fill out and boring e-m ail to answer
and all m anner of drudge work that doesn’t necessarily fire our soul.
W h a t’s more, for some people, much of w hat they do a l l d a y consists
of these routine, not terrib ly captivating, tasks. In these situations,
i t ’s best to try to unleash the positive side of the Sawyer Effect by
attem p tin g to turn work into p lay— to increase the task’s variety,
to m ake it more lik e a gam e, or to use it to help m aster other skills.
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a n d t h e S p e c i a l C i r c u m s t a n c e s W h e n T h e y Do
A las, th at’s not alw ays possible. And this means that som etim es,
even “if-then” rewards are an option.
Let’s put this in sigh t about rewards and routines into practice.
Suppose you’re a m anager at a sm all nonprofit organization. Your
design team created a terrific poster prom oting your group ’s next
b ig event. And now you need to send the poster to tw enty thousand
m em bers of your organization. Since the costs of outsourcing the
job to a professional m ailin g firm are too steep for your budget, you
decide to do the w ork in-house. Trouble is, the posters came back
fr o m the p rin ter much later than you expected and they need to get
in the m ail this weekend.
W h a t’s the best w ay to en list your staff of ten, and m aybe a few
others, in a massive weekend poster m ailin g session? The task is the
very definition of routine: The people p articip atin g m ust roll up
the posters, slide them into the m ailin g tubes, cap those tubes, and
apply a m ailin g label and the proper postage. Four steps— none of
them notably interesting.
One m anagerial option is coercion. If you’re the boss, you
could force people to spend their Saturday and Sunday on this
m ind-num bing project. They m ig h t comply, but the dam age to their
morale and long-term com m itm ent could be substantial. Another
option is to ask for volunteers. B ut face it: M ost people can th in k of
far better ways to spend a weekend.
So in this case, an “if-th en ” reward m igh t be effective. For instance,
you could prom ise a big office-wide party if everybody pitches in on
the project. You could offer a g ift certificate to everyone who par
ticipates. Or you could go further and pay people a sm all sum for
every poster they insert, enclose, and send— in the hope that the
piecework fee w ill boost their productivity.
W h ile such tan gib le, contingent rewards can often underm ine
intrinsic m otivation and creativity, those drawbacks m atter less
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here. The assignm ent neither inspires deep passion nor requires
deep th in k in g. Carrots, in this case, won’t hurt and m igh t help.
A nd you’ll increase your chances of success by supplem enting the
poster-packing rewards w ith three im portant practices:
• O ffer a ra tio n a le fo r w h y th e ta s k is n e cessary. A

job that's not inherently interesting can become more
m eaningful, and therefore more en gagin g, if it ’s part of
a larger purpose. Explain why this poster is so im portant
and why sending it out now is critical to your organiza
tion’s m ission.
• A c k n o w le d g e th a t th e ta s k is b o rin g . T his is an act
of em pathy, of course. And the acknow ledgm ent w ill
help people understand w hy this is the rare instance
when “if-then” rewards are part of how your organiza
tion operates.
• A llo w p eo p le to co m p le te th e ta s k th e ir o w n w ay.
T hink autonomy, not control. State the outcom e you
need. But instead of specifying precisely the way to
reach it— how each poster m ust be rolled and how each
m ailin g label m ust be affixed— give them freedom over
how they do the job.
That's the approach for routine tasks. W h at about for other sorts of
undertakings?
For work that requires more than just clim b in g, rung by rung, up
a ladder of instructions, rewards are more perilous. The best w ay to
avoid the seven deadly flaws of extrinsic m otivators is to avoid them
altogether or to downplay them significantly and instead em pha
size the elem ents of deeper m otivation— autonomy, mastery, and
purpose— that w e’ll explore later in the book. B ut in the workplace,
64
and t he Spe ci a l C i r c u m s t a n c e s W h e n T h e y Do
a rig id adherence to this approach bum ps up again st a fact of life:

Even people who do groovy, creative, righ t-b rain work s till w ant to
be paid. And here Teresa A m abile has shed some lig h t on how to use
rewards in a w ay that reckons w ith life’s realities but reduces extrin
sic m otivators’ hidden costs.
Go back to the study in w hich A m abile and two colleagues com
pared the q u ality of com m issioned and noncommissioned p ain tin gs
from a group of artists. A panel of experts, blind to what the in vesti
gators were exploring, consistently rated the noncommissioned art
work as more creative. One reason is that several artists said their
com missions were “con strain in g”— that they found themselves
w orking toward a goal they d id n ’t endorse in a m anner they d id n ’t
control. However, in the same study, A m abile also discovered that
when the artists considered th eir commissions "enabling”— that is,
“the com m ission enabled the artist to do som ething interesting or
ex citin g ”3— the creativity ran king of w hat they produced shot back
up. The same was true for com missions the artists felt provided them
w ith useful inform ation and feedback about their ability.
This is a crucial research in sight. The science shows th at it is
possible— though tricky— to incorporate rewards into nonroutine,
more creative settings w ithout causing a cascade of dam age.
So suppose w e’re back at your nonprofit nine months later. The
m ailin g went out flawlessly. The poster was a h it. The event was a
smash. You’re planning another for later this year. You’ve settled on
the date and found your venue. Now you need an in sp irin g poster to
captivate im aginations and draw a crowd.
W h at should you do?
H ere’s w hat you shou ldn't do: Offer an “if-th en ” reward to the
design staff. Do not stride into their offices and announce: “If you
come up w ith a poster that rocks m y world or that boosts atten
dance over last year, then you’ll g e t a ten-percent bonus.” A lthough
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DRIVE
th at m otivational approach is common in organizations all over the

w orld, i t ’s a recipe for reduced performance. C reating a poster isn ’t
routine. It requires conceptual, breakthrough, artistic th in k in g. And
as w e’ve learned, “if-th en ” rewards are an ideal w ay to squash this
sort of th in k in g.
Your best approach is to have already established the conditions of
a genu in ely m otivating environm ent. The baseline rewards m ust be
sufficient. T hat is, the team ’s basic compensation m ust be adequate
and fair— p articularly compared w ith people doing sim ilar work for
sim ilar organizations. Your nonprofit m ust be a congenial place to
work. And the people on your team m ust have autonomy, they m ust
have am ple opportunity to pursue m astery, and th eir daily duties
m ust relate to a larger purpose. If these elem ents are in place, the
best strategy is to provide a sense of urgency and significance— and
then get out of the talen t’s way.
B ut you m ay still be able to boost performance a b it— more for
future tasks than for this one— through the delicate use of rewards.
J u s t be careful. Your efforts w ill backfire unless the rewards you offer
m eet one essential requirem ent. And you’ll be on firm er m otivational
footing if you follow two additional principles.
The essential requirem ent: Any ex trinsic rew a rd should, be unexpected
a n d offered on ly a fter the task is complete.
H olding out a prize at the beginning of a project— and offering it
as a contingency— w ill in evitab ly focus people’s attention on obtain
in g the reward rather than on attackin g the problem . B ut introduc
in g the subject of rewards after the job is done is less risky.
In other words, w h ere “if-th e n ” rew ards a re a mistake, s h ift to “now th a t”
rew a rd s— as in “Now that you’ve finished the poster and it turned
out so w ell, I’d like to celebrate by takin g you out to lunch.”
As Deci and his colleagues explain, “If tangib le rewards are given
unexpectedly to people after they have finished a task, the rewards
66
an d t h e S p e c i a l C i r c u m s t a n c e s W h e n T h e y Do
are less lik e ly to be experienced as the reason for doing the task and
are thus less lik e ly to be d etrim ental to intrinsic m o tivation .”4
Likew ise, A m abile has found in some studies “that the highest
levels of creativity were produced by subjects who received a reward
as a kind of a bonus.”5 So when the poster turns out great, you could
buy the design team a case of beer or even hand them a cash bonus
w ith out snuffing their creativity. The team d id n ’t expect any extras
and g e ttin g them d id n ’t h in ge on a p articular outcome. You’re
sim p ly offering your appreciation for th eir stellar work. B ut keep
in m ind one ginorm ous caveat: Repeated “now th at” bonuses can
q u ick ly become expected “if-th en ” entitlem ents— w hich can u lti
m ately crater effective performance.
A t this point, by lim itin g rewards for nonroutine, creative work to
the unexpected, “now th at” variety, you’re in less dangerous waters.
B ut you’ll do even better if you follow two more guidelin es.
First, consider n on ta n gib le rew ards. Praise and positive feedback are
m uch less corrosive than cash and trophies. In fact, in D eci’s o rig i
nal experim ents, and in his subsequent analysis of other studies, he
found that “positive feedback can have an enhancing effect on in trin
sic m o tivation .”6 So if the folks on the design team turn out a show-
stopping poster, m aybe just w alk into their offices and say, “Wow.
You really did an am azing job on that poster. I t’s goin g to have a
huge im pact on g ettin g people to come to this event. Thank yo u.” It
sounds sm all and sim ple, but it can have an enormous effect.
Second, p rov id e u sefu l in form a tion . A m abile has found that w hile
controlling extrinsic m otivators can clobber creativity, “inform ational
or enabling m otivators can be conducive” to it.7 In the workplace,
people are th irstin g to learn about how th ey’re doing, but only if the
inform ation isn’t a tacit effort to m anipulate their behavior. So don’t
tell the design team: “T hat poster was perfect. You did it exactly
the w ay I asked .” Instead, give people m eaningful inform ation about
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DRIVE
th eir work. The more feedback focuses on specifics (“great use of

color”)— and the more the praise is about effort and strategy rather
than about achieving a particular outcome— the more effective it
can be.
In brief, for creative, righ t-b rain, heuristic tasks, you’re on shaky
ground offering “if-then” rewards. You’re better off using “now th at”
rewards. And you're best off if your “now th at” rewards provide
praise, feedback, and useful information.
(For a visual depiction of this approach, see the flowchart on the
next page.)
68
When to Use R ewards: A Simple Flow chart
CHAPTER 3
Type I and Type X
ochester, N ew York, is an u n likely epicenter for a social earth

R quake. The companies that b u ilt this stolid city, just sixty-tw o
m iles from the Canadian border, were titans of the in dustrial econ
omy. Eastman Kodak m ade film. W estern U nion delivered telegram s.
Xerox produced photocopiers. And they piloted th eir enterprises by
the precepts of M otivation 2.0: If you offer people steady em ploy
m ent and carefully calibrated rewards, th ey’ll do w hat executives and
shareholders w ant, and everyone w ill prosper.
B ut startin g in the 1970s, on the campus of the U niversity of
Rochester, a m otivational revolution was brew ing. It began in 1971,
w hen Edward Deci, fresh from his Soma puzzle experim ents, arrived
on campus for a joint appointm ent in the psychology departm ent
and the business school. It intensified in 1973, when the business
school uncerem oniously booted Deci because of his heretical findings
Type I and Type X
about rewards, and the psychology departm ent hired him full-tim e.
It gathered more steam in 1975, w hen Deci published a book called
In trin sic M otiva tion . A nd it launched in earnest in 1977, when a stu
dent nam ed R ichard Ryan showed up for graduate school.
R yan, a philosophy m ajor in college, had just m issed being drafted
into the m ilitary. N ursin g a b it of survivor’s g u ilt, he’d been w orking
w ith V ietnam W ar veterans suffering from post-traum atic stress dis
order. A nd h e’d come to the U niversity of Rochester to learn how to
become a better clin ician . One day, in a seminar, a professor brought
up the subject of in trin sic m otivation— and then denounced it w ith
table-pounding ferocity. “I figured th at if there was th at much resis
tance, this m ust be som ething in terestin g,” Ryan told me. He picked
up a copy of D eci’s book, found it com pelling, and asked its author
to lunch. So commenced a rem arkable research collaboration that
continues to this day.
W h en I m et them not long ago, in U of R ’s blocky M eliora H all,
the tw o were a study in both contrast and sim ilarity. Deci is ta ll and
reedy, w ith a pale com plexion and thin, w ispy hair. He speaks in a
q u iet, soothing voice th at rem inded me of the late Am erican ch il
dren’s television host Mr. Rogers. R yan, who has straigh t w h ite hair
parted down the m iddle, is ruddier and more intense. H e presses his
point lik e a skilled litigato r. D eci, m eanw hile, w aits p atien tly for
you to reach his point— then he agrees w ith you and praises your
in sight. Deci is the classical m usic station on your FM d ial; Ryan is
more cable TV. And yet they talk to each other in a cryptic academ ic
shorthand, their ideas sm oothly in sync. The com bination has been
powerful enough to m ake them am ong the most influential behav
ioral scientists of their generation.
T ogether Deci and R yan have fashioned w hat they call “self-
determ in atio n th eo ry” (SDT).
M any theories of behavior pivot around a particular hum an
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DRIVE
tendency. W e’re keen responders to positive and negative reinforce

m ents, or zippy calculators of our self-interest, or lum py duffel bags
of psychosexual conflicts. SDT, by contrast, begins w ith a notion
of universal hum an needs. It argues th at we have three innate psy
chological needs— competence, autonomy, and relatedness. W hen
those needs are satisfied, w e’re m otivated, productive, and happy.
W hen th ey’re thw arted, our m otivation, productivity, and happi
ness p lu m m et.1 “If there’s anything {fundamental} about our nature,
i t ’s the capacity for interest. Some th ings facilitate it. Some things
underm ine it ,” Ryan expLained d u rin g one of our conversations.
Put another way, w e’ve a ll got that th ird drive. It’s part of what
it means to be hum an. But whether th at aspect of our hum anity
em erges in our lives depends on w hether the conditions around us
support it.
And the m ain m echanism s of M otivation 2.0 are more stifling
than supportive. “T his is a really big th in g in m anagem ent,” says
Ryan. W h en people aren’t producing, companies typ ically resort to
rewards or punishm ent. “W h at you haven’t done is the hard work of
diagnosing what the problem is. You're tryin g to run over the prob
lem w ith a carrot or a stic k ,” Ryan explains. T hat doesn’t m ean that
SDT unequivocally opposes rewards. “O f course, th ey’re necessary
in workplaces and other settin gs,” says Deci. “B ut the less salient
they are m ade, the better. W hen people use rewards to m otivate,
th a t’s when th ey’re most dem o tivatin g.” Instead, Deci and Ryan say
we should focus our efforts on creating environm ents for our innate
psychological needs to flourish.
Over the last th irty years, through both their scholarship and
m entorship, Deci and Ryan have established a network o f sev
eral dozen SDT scholars conducting research in the U nited States,
Canada, Israel, Singapore, and throughout W estern Europe. These
scientists have explored self-determ ination and in trin sic m otivation
72
Type l a n d Type X
in laboratory experim ents and field studies that encompass just

about every realm — business, education, m edicine, sports, exercise,
personal productivity, environm entalism , relationships, and physical
and m ental health. They have produced hundreds of research papers,
most of which point to the same conclusion. H um an beings have an
innate inner drive to be autonom ous, self-determ ined, and connected
to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more
and live richer lives.
SDT is an im portant part of a broad sw irl of new th in k in g about
the hum an condition. This constellation includes, perhaps most
prom inently, the positive psychology movem ent, w hich has reori
ented the study of psychological science away from its previous focus
on m alady and dysfunction and toward w ell-bein g and effective
functioning. U nder the leadership of the U niversity of Pennsylva
n ia’s M artin Seligm an, positive psychology has been m in tin g legions
of new scholars and leaving a deep im p rin t on how scientists, econo
m ists, therapists, and everyday people th ink about hum an behavior.
One of positive psychology’s m ost influential figures is M ih aly Csik-
szentm ihalyi, whom I m entioned earlier. C sikszen tm ih alyi’s first
book about “flow” and Seligm an ’s first book on his theories (which
argued that helplessness was learned, rather than innate, behavior)
appeared in the same year as D eci’s book on in trin sic m otivation.
Clearly, som ething big was in the air in 1975. I t’s just taken us a
generation to reckon w ith it.
The broad assortm ent of new thinkers includes Carol Dweck
of Stanford U niversity and H arvard’s A m abile. It includes a few
economists— m ost prom inently, Roland Benabou of Princeton U n i
versity and Bruno Frey of the U niversity of Z urich— who are ap p ly
in g some of these concepts to the dism al science. And it includes
some scholars who don’t study m otivation per se— in particular,
H arvard U niversity’s H oward G ardner and Tufts U niversity’s Robert
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DRIVE
Sternberg— who have changed our view of in telligen ce and creativ

ity and offered a b righ ter view of hum an potential.
This collection of scholars— not in concert, not intentionally, and
perhaps not even know ing th ey’ve been doing so— has been creating
the foundation for a new, more effective, operating system . A t long
last, the tim es m ay be catching up to th eir work.
T H E P O W ER OF T H E A L P H A B E T
1 Д I ords m atter, of course, but so do letters. Case in point: M eyer

I | \*
t# ¥ Friedm an. You’ve probably never heard of h im , but you alm ost
certainly know his legacy. Friedm an, who died in 2001 at the ripe
old age of ninety, was a cardiologist who for decades ran a b ustling
office in San Francisco. In the late 1950s, he and fellow physician
R ay Rosenman began noticing sim ilarities in th eir patients who
were prone to heart disease. It wasn’t only w hat these patients ate or
w hat genes they inherited that affected their suscep tib ility to coro
nary trouble. It was also how they led th eir lives. These patients,
Friedm an noted, dem onstrated:
a particular complex of personality traits, in clud in g excessive

com petition drive, aggressiveness, im patience, and a harry
ing sense of tim e urgency. Individuals d isp layin g this pattern
seem to be engaged in a chronic, ceaseless, and often fruitless
stru g g le— w ith them selves, w ith others, w ith circum stances,
w ith tim e, sometim es w ith life itself.2
These people were significantly more lik ely to develop heart disease
than other patients— even those who shared sim ilar physical attributes,
74
Type I and Туре X
exercise regim ens, diets, and fam ily histories. Looking for a convenient
and memorable way to explain this insight to their m edical colleagues
and the wider world, Friedman and Rosenman found inspiration in
the alphabet. They dubbed this behavioral pattern “Type A .”
Type A behavior stood in contrast to— natch— Type В behavior.
U nlike their horn-honking, foot-tapping counterparts, who suffered
from “hurry sickness,” people d isp layin g Type В behavior were rarely
harried by life or made hostile by its demands. In their research,
Friedm an and Rosenman found th at Type В people were just as in tel
lig en t, and frequently just as am bitious, as Type A’s. B ut they wore
their am bition differently. W ritin g about the Type В person (and
using the m ale-centered language common in the day), the cardiolo
gists explained, “He m ay also have a considerable am ount o f ‘d riv e,’
but its character is such that it seems to steady h im , give confidence
and security to him , rather than to goad, irritate, and infuriate, as
w ith the Type A m an .”3 One key to reducing deaths from heart dis
ease and im proving public health, therefore, was to help Type A’s
learn to become a little more lik e Type B ’s.
N early fifty years later, this nom enclature rem ains. The two le t
ters help us understand a complex web of behaviors— and guide us
toward a better and more effective w ay to live.
Around the same tim e that Friedm an and Rosenman were m ak
in g their discovery, another A m erican was pushing frontiers of his
own. D ouglas M cG regor was a m anagem ent professor at M IT who
brought to the job an in terestin g com bination of experiences. H e’d
earned a Ph.D. from H arvard in psychology (rather than in econom
ics or engineering). And in contrast to m ost of his colleagues, he’d
actu ally run an in stitutio n. From 1948 to 1954, he was president of
A ntioch College.
D raw ing on his understanding of the hum an psyche, as w ell as his
experience as a leader, M cG regor began reth inkin g the conventions
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DRIVE
of modern m anagem ent. He thought th at the problem w ith corpo

rate leadership w asn’t so much its execution as its prem ises. B egin
nin g w ith a speech in 1957, and later in a groundbreaking book
called T he H um an Sick o f E nterprise in I9 6 0 , M cG regor argued that
those running companies were operating from faulty assumptions
about hum an behavior.
Most leaders believed that the people in their organizations fun
dam en tally d islik ed w ork and w ould avoid it if it they could. These
faceless m inions feared takin g responsibility, craved security, and
badly needed direction. As a result, “m ost people m ust be coerced,
controlled, directed, and threatened w ith punishm ent to get them
to put forth adequate effort toward the achievem ent of organiza
tional objectives.” B ut M cGregor said there was an alternative view
of em ployees— one that offered a more accurate assessment of the
hum an condition and a more effective startin g point for running
com panies. This perspective held that ta k in g an interest in work is
“as natural as p lay or rest,” that creativity and in g en u ity were w idely
distributed in the population, and that under the proper conditions,
people w ill accept, and even seek, responsibility.4
To explain these contrasting outlooks, M cG regor m ined the back
end of the alphabet. He called the first view Theory X and the sec
ond Theory Y. If your startin g point was Theory X , he said, your
m anagerial techniques would in evitab ly produce lim ited results,
or even go aw ry entirely. If you believed in the “m ediocrity of the
m asses,” as he put it, then m ediocrity became the ceilin g on what
you could achieve. B ut if your startin g point was Theory Y, the pos
sib ilities were vast— not sim p ly for the in d iv id u al’s potential, but for
the company's bottom line as w ell. The w ay to m ake business orga
nizations work better, therefore, was to shift m anagem ent th in k in g
aw ay from Theory X and toward Theory Y.
Once again , the nom enclature stuck— and M cG regor’s approach
76
Type I and Type X
soon became a staple of m anagem ent education.* A picture m ay be

worth a thousand words— but som etim es neither is as potent as just
two letters.
So w ith a hoist from M eyer Friedm an onto the shoulders of D oug
las M cGregor, I’d lik e to introduce m y own alphabetic w ay to th ink
about hum an m otivation.
TYPE I A N D TYPE X
T h e M otivation 2.0 operating system depended on, and fostered,

1 w hat I call Type X behavior. Type X behavior is fueled more
by extrinsic desires than intrinsic ones. It concerns itself less w ith
the inherent satisfaction of an activ ity and more w ith the external
rewards to w hich that activ ity leads. The M otivation 3.0 operating
system — the upgrade th at’s needed to m eet the new realities of how
we organize, th ink about, and do w hat we do— depends on what
I call Type I behavior. Type I behavior is fueled more by intrinsic
desires than extrinsic ones. It concerns itself less w ith the external
rewards to w hich an activ ity leads and more w ith the inherent satis
faction of the activ ity itself. A t the center of Type X behavior is the
second drive. A t the center of Type I behavior is the third drive.
If we w ant to strengthen our organizations, get beyond our
decade of underachievem ent, and address the inchoate sense that
so m eth in g’s gone wrong in our businesses, our lives, and our world,
we need to move from Type X to Type I. (I use these two letters
*A Jas, its im p act was g re ate r in the classroom th an in the boardroom . M an y com panies d id m ove
th e ir practices m ore in the d irectio n o f T heory Y. B u t ta lk to m an y m an agers even today and— in
p rivate— th e y 'll often voice the sam e assu m ptio ns of T heory X th at M cG regor a rtic u la te d in
I9 6 0 .
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DRIVE
largely to signify “extrinsic” and “in trin sic,” but also to pay homage
to D ouglas McGregor.)
To be sure, reducing hum an behavior to two categories sacrifices
a certain am ount of nuance. And nobody exhibits p urely Type X or
Type I behavior every w aking m inute of every liv in g day w ithout
exception. B ut we do have certain, often very clear, dispositions.
You probably know w hat I mean. T h in k about yourself. Does
w hat energizes you— w hat gets you up in the m orning and propels
you through the day— come from the inside or from the outside?
W h at about your spouse, your partner, or your children? How about
the men and women around you at work? If you’re lik e most people
I’ve talked to, you in stan tly have a sense into w hich category some
one belongs.*
I don’t mean to say that Type X people always neglect the inher
ent enjoym ent of w hat they do— or that Type I people resist outside
goodies of any kind. B ut for Type X 's, the m ain m otivator is external
rewards; any deeper satisfaction is welcom e, but secondary. For Type
I’s, the m ain m otivator is the freedom, challenge, and purpose of
the undertaking itself; any other gains are welcom e, but m ain ly as
a bonus.
A few more distinctions to keep in m ind before we go further:
T yp e I b e h a v io r is m a d e , not b o rn . These behavioral patterns

aren’t fixed traits. They are proclivities th at em erge from circum
stance, experience, and context. Type I behavior, because it arises in
*Y ou can even try this w ith people you don't know. See if yo u agree. E nron’s J e ff S k illin g was
Type X ; B erkshire H a th a w a y’s W arren B uffett is Type I. A n to nio S a lieri w as Type X ; W o lfgan g
A m adeus M ozart was Type I. T he very w ea lth y D onald T ru m p is Type X ; the even w e a lth ie r
O prah W in frey is Type I. F orm er CEO of GE Ja c k W elch is Type X ; In terface G lobal founder
R ay A nderson is Type I. Sim on C o w ell is Type X ; B ruce Sp rin gsteen is T ype I. For a m ore
nuanced view , check out the Type I T o o lkit at the end of the book to find a free onlin e assessm ent
of the catego ry to w hich you belong.
78
Type I and Type X
part from universal hum an needs, does not depend on age, gender,
or nationality. The science dem onstrates that once people learn the
fundam ental practices and attitud es— and can exercise them in sup
portive settings— their m otivation, and their ultim ate performance,
soars. A ny Type X can become a Type I.
T ype I ’s a lm o st a lw a y s o u tp e rfo rm T ype X ’s in th e lo n g ru n .

In trin sically m otivated people usually achieve more than their
rew ard-seeking counterparts. A las, th at’s not alw ays true in the short
term . A n intense focus on extrinsic rewards can indeed deliver fast
results. The trouble is, this approach is difficult to sustain. And it
doesn’t assist in m astery— w hich is the source of achievem ent over
the long haul. The most successful people, the evidence shows, often
aren’t d irectly pursuing conventional notions of success. T h ey’re
w orking hard and p ersisting through difficulties because of their
internal desire to control their lives, learn about their w orld, and
accom plish som ething that endures.
T ype I b e h a v io r d o es n o t d is d a in m o n ey o r re c o g n itio n . Both

Type X ’s and Type I’s care about money. If an em ployee’s compensa
tion doesn’t h it the baseline that I described in Chapter 2— if her
organization doesn’t pay her an adequate am ount, or if her pay isn ’t
equitable compared to others doing sim ilar work— that person’s
m otivation w ill crater, regardless of whether she leans toward X
or toward I. However, once compensation meets that level, money
plays a different role for Type I ’s than for Type X ’s. Type I s don’t
turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. B ut one reason fair and
adequate pay is so essential is that it takes the issue of money off the
table so they can focus on the work itself. By contrast, for m any Type
X ’s, money is the table. I t’s w hy they do w hat they do. R ecognition is
sim ilar. Type I’s lik e being recognized for their accom plishm ents—
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DRIVE
because recognition is a form of feedback. B ut for them , u n lik e for

Type X ’s, recognition is not a goal in itself.
T ype I b e h a v io r is a re n e w a b le re so u rc e . T hink of Type X behav

ior as coal and Type I behavior as the sun. For m ost of recent history,
coal has been the cheapest, easiest, most efficient resource. B ut coal
has two downsides. First, it produces nasty things lik e air pollution
and greenhouse gases. Second, i t ’s finite; g e ttin g more of it becomes
increasingly difficult and expensive each year. Type X behavior is sim
ilar. An em phasis on rewards and punishm ents spews its own exter
n alities (as enum erated in Chapter 2). And “if-th en ” m otivators always
grow more expensive. B ut Type I behavior, w hich is b u ilt around
intrinsic m otivation, draws on resources th at are easily replenished
and inflict little dam age. It is the m otivational equivalent of clean
energy: inexpensive, safe to use, and endlessly renewable.
T ype I b e h a v io r p ro m o tes g re a te r p h y sic a l a n d m e n ta l

w e ll-b e in g . According to a raft of studies from SDT researchers, peo
ple oriented toward autonom y and intrinsic m otivation have h igher
self-esteem , better interpersonal relationships, and greater general
w ell-bein g than those who are extrin sically m otivated. By contrast,
people whose core aspirations are Type X validations such as money,
fame, or beauty tend to have poorer psychological health. T here’s
even a connection between Type X and Type A. Deci found that
those oriented toward control and extrinsic rewards showed greater
p ub lic self-consciousness, acted more defensively, and were more
lik e ly to exhibit the Type A behavior p attern .5
U ltim ately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy,

m astery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted
80
Type I and Type X
to becom ing better and better at som ething that m atters. And it
connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.
Some m ig h t dism iss notions lik e these as gooey and idealistic,
but the science says otherwise. The science confirms that this sort
of behavior is essential to being hum an— and that now, in a rapidly
changing economy, it is also critical for professional, personal, and
organizational success of any kind.
So we have a choice. W e can clin g to a view of hum an m otivation
that is grounded more in old habits than in modern science. Or we
can listen to the research, drag our business and personal practices
into the tw enty-first century, and craft a new operating system to
help ourselves, our com panies, and our world work a little better.
It won’t be easy. It w on’t happen overnight. So le t’s get started.
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Part Two
The Three Elements

CHAPTER
Autonomy
’ve seen the future— and it works. It works in around-the-clock

I bursts in Sydney, A ustralia. It works on g u errilla-style side proj
ects in M ountain View, California. And it works whenever it dam n
w ell pleases in C harlottesville, V irgin ia. The reason w h y it works is
because of h ow it works. On the edges of the economy— slowly, but
inexorably— old-fashioned ideas of m anagem ent are g iv in g w ay to a
newfangled em phasis on self-direction.
T h at’s why, a little past noon on a rainy Friday in C harlottesville,
only a third of CEO J e ff G unther’s employees have shown up for
work. B ut G unther— entrepreneur, m anager, cap italist— is neither
worried nor annoyed. In fact, he’s as calm and focused as a monk.
M aybe th at’s because he d id n ’t roll into the office h im self u n til about
an hour ago. Or m aybe th a t’s because he knows his crew isn’t sh irk
ing. T h ey’re w orking— just on th eir own terms.
DRIVE
A t the b eginning of the year, G unther launched an experim ent in

autonom y at M eddius, one of a trio of companies he runs. He turned
the company, which creates com puter software and hardware to help
hospitals integrate their information system s, into a RO W E— a
results-only work environm ent.
RO W Es are the brainchild of Cali R essler and Jo d y Thompson,
two former hum an resources executives at the A m erican retailer Best
Buy. R O W E ’s principles m arry the commonsense p ragm atism of Ben
F ranklin to the cage-rattlin g radicalism of Saul A linsky. In a RO W E
workplace, people don’t have schedules. They show up when they
w ant. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain tim e— or any
tim e, for th at m atter. They just have to g et their work done. How
they do it, when they do it, and where they do it is up to them .
T hat appealed to G unther, who’s in his early th irties. “M anage
m ent isn ’t about w alk in g around and seeing if people are in their
offices,” he told me. I t’s about creating conditions for people to
do their best work. T h at’s w hy he’d alw ays tried to give em ploy
ees a long leash. B ut as M eddius expanded, and as G unther began
exploring new office space, he started w ondering w hether talented,
grow n-up employees doing sophisticated work needed a leash of any
len gth . So at the com pany’s holiday dinner in December 2008, he
m ade an announcement: For the first ninety days of the new year,
the entire twenty-two-person operation w ould try an experim ent. It
would become a RO W E.
“In the b eginn ing, people d id n ’t take to it ,” G unther says. The
office filled up around nine a .m . and em ptied out in the early eve
n in g, just as before. A few staffers had come out of extrem ely con
tro llin g environm ents and weren't accustomed to this kind of leeway.
(A t one em ployee’s previous company, staff had to arrive each day by
eig h t a .m . If someone was late, even by a few m inutes, the employee
had to w rite an explanation for everyone else to read.) But after a
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Autonomy
few w eeks, most people found th eir groove. P roductivity rose. Stress
declined. And although two em ployees struggled w ith the freedom
and left, by the end of the test period G unther decided to go w ith
RO W E perm anently.
“Some people (outside of the com pany) thought I was crazy,” he
says. “They wondered, ‘How can you know w hat your em ployees are
doing if th ey’re not here?’ ” B ut in his view, the team was accom
p lish in g more under this new arrangem ent. One reason: They were
focused on the work itse lf rather than on w hether someone would
call them a slacker for leaving at three p .m . to watch a daugh ter’s soc
cer gam e. And since the b ulk of his staff consists of software devel
opers, designers, and others doing high-level creative work, that was
essential. “For them , it ’s all about craftsm anship. And they need a
lot of autonom y.”
People s till had specific goals they had to reach— for exam ple,
com pleting a project by a certain tim e or rin g in g up a particular
num ber of sales. And if they needed help, G unther was there to assist.
B ut he decided against tyin g those goals to compensation. “That
creates a culture that says it ’s all about the money and not enough
about the w o rk.” Money, he believes, is only “a threshold m otivator.”
People m ust be paid w ell and be able to take care ol their fam ilies, he
says. B ut once a company meets this baseline, dollars and cents don’t
m uch affect performance and m otivation. Indeed, G unther thinks
that in a RO W E environm ent, em ployees are far less lik ely to jum p
to another job for a $ 1 0 ,0 0 0 or even $ 2 0 ,0 0 0 increase in salary. The
freedom they have to do great w ork is more valuable, and harder to
m atch, than a pay raise— and em ployees’ spouses, partners, and fam i
lies are am ong R O W E ’s staunchest advocates.
“More companies w ill m igrate to this as more business owners
m y age come up. M y d ad’s generation views hum an beings as human
resources. T h ey’re the two-by-fours you need to build your house,”
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he says. “For me, it ’s a partnership between me and the employees.

T h ey’re not resources. T h ey’re partners.” And partners, lik e all of us,
need to direct their own lives.
P L A Y E R S OR P AWNS?
I i\ I e forget sometimes th at “m anagem ent” does not em anate from

¥ 'J nature. It’s not lik e a tree or a river. It’s lik e a television or a
bicycle. I t’s som ething that humans invented. As the strategy g u m
G ary H am el has observed, m anagem ent is a technology. And lik e
M otivation 2.0 , it ’s a technology that has grow n creaky. W h ile some
companies have oiled the gears a b it, and p len ty more have paid lip
service to the same, at its core m anagem ent hasn’t changed much
in a hundred years. Its central ethic rem ains control; its chief tools
rem ain extrinsic m otivators. That leaves it largely out of sync w ith
the nonroutine, righ t-b rain ab ilities on w hich m any of the w o rld’s
economies now depend. B ut could its m ost g larin g weakness run
deeper? Is m anagem ent, as it ’s currently constituted, out of sync
w ith hum an nature itself?
The idea of m anagem ent (that is, m anagem ent of people rather
than m anagem ent of, say, supply chains) is b u ilt on certain assum p
tions about the basic natures of those being m anaged. It presumes
th at to take action or move forward, we need a prod— that absent a
reward or punishm ent, w e’d rem ain happily and in ertly in place. It
also presumes that once people do get m oving, they need direction—
th at w ithout a firm and reliable guide, th ey’d wander.
B ut is th at really our fundam ental nature? Or, to use yet another
com puter metaphor, is th at our “default se ttin g ”? W hen we enter
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Autonomy
the w orld, are we w ired to be passive and inert? Or are we w ired to

be active and engaged?
I’m convinced it ’s the latter— that our basic nature is to be curi
ous and self-directed. A nd I say th at not because I’m a dewy-eyed
id ealist, but because I’ve been around young children and because
m y wife and I have three kids of our own. Have you ever seen a
six-m onth-old or a one-year-old w ho’s not curious and self-directed?
I haven’t. T h at’s how we are out of the box. If, at age fourteen or
forty-three, w e’re passive and inert, th at’s not because it ’s our nature.
It’s because som ething flipped our default setting.
T hat som ething could w ell be m anagem ent— not m erely how
bosses treat us at work, but also how the broader ethos has leeched
into schools, fam ilies, and m any other aspects of our lives. Perhaps
m anagem ent isn’t responding to our supposedly natural state of pas
sive inertia. Perhaps m anagem ent is one of the forces th at’s sw itching
our default settin g and p rod u cin g that state.
Now, th at’s not as insidious as it sounds. Subm erging part of our
nature in the nam e of economic survival can be a sensible move. M y
ancestors did it; so did yours. And there are tim es, even now, when
we have no other choice.
B ut today economic accom plishm ent, not to m ention personal
fulfillm ent, more often sw ings on a different hinge. It depends not
on keeping our nature subm erged but on allow ing it to surface. It
requires resisting the tem ptation to control people— and instead
doing everything we can to reawaken their deep-seated sense of
autonomy. This innate capacity for self-direction is at the heart of
M otivation 3.0 and Type I behavior.
The fundam entally autonomous qu ality of hum an nature is central
to self-determ ination theory (SDT). As I explained in the previous
chapter, Deci and Ryan cite autonom y as one of three basic hum an
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needs. And of the three, it ’s

"The u ltim a te fre e d o m fo r c re a tiv e g ro u p s the most im portant— the
is th e fre e d o m to e x p e rim e n t w ith n e w sun around w hich SD T’s
ideas. S om e s k e p tic s in s is t t h a t in n o v a tio n planets orbit. In the 1980s,
is expensive. In th e lo n g ru n , in n o v a tio n as they progressed in their
is cheap. M e d io c rity is e x p e n sive —a n d w ork, Deci and Ryan moved
a u to n o m y ca n be th e a n tid o te ." aw ay from categorizing be
T O M KELLEY havior as eith er extrinsically
G eneral M a n a g er, IDEO m otivated or in trin sically
m otivated to categorizing
it as either controlled or
autonomous. “Autonomous m otivation involves behaving w ith a
full sense of volition and choice," they w rite, “whereas controlled
m otivation involves behaving w ith the experience of pressure and
dem and toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived
to be external to the self.”1
Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It’s
not the rugged , go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody in d ividualism of the
Am erican cowboy. It means acting w ith choice— w hich means we
can be both autonomous and happily interdependent w ith others.
A nd w hile the idea of independence has national and political rever
berations, autonom y appears to be a hum an concept rather than a
western one. Researchers have found a lin k between autonom y and
overall w ell-being not only in North A m erica and W estern Europe,
but also in R ussia, Turkey, and South Korea. Even in high-poverty
non-W estern locales lik e Bangladesh, social scientists have found
that autonom y is som ething that people seek and that improves their
liv es.2
A sense of autonom y has a powerful effect on in dividual perfor
mance and attitud e. According to a cluster of recent behavioral sci
ence studies, autonomous m otivation promotes greater conceptual
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Autonomy
understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in

sporting activities, h igher productivity, less burnout, and greater
levels of psychological w ell-b ein g.3 Those effects carry over to the
workplace. In 20 04 , Deci and R yan, along w ith Paul Baard of
Fordham U niversity, carried out a study of workers at an Am erican
investm ent bank. The three researchers found greater job satisfaction
am ong em ployees whose bosses offered “autonom y support.” These
bosses saw issues from the em ployee’s point of view, gave m eaningful
feedback and inform ation, provided am ple choice over w hat to do
and how to do it, and encouraged em ployees to take on new projects.
The resultin g enhancem ent in job satisfaction, in turn, led to higher
performance on the job. W h a t’s more, the benefits that autonom y
confers on individuals extend to th eir organizations. For exam ple,
researchers at Cornell U niversity studied 320 sm all businesses,
h alf of w hich granted workers autonomy, the other h alf relyin g on
top-down direction. The businesses that offered autonom y grew at
four tim es the rate of the control-oriented firms and had one-third
the turnover.4
Yet too m any businesses rem ain w oefully behind the science.
Most tw enty-first-century notions of m anagem ent presume that,
in the end, people are pawns rather than players. B ritish economist
Francis Green, to cite just one exam ple, points to the lack of in d i
vidual discretion at w ork as the m ain explanation for declin in g pro
d u ctivity and job satisfaction in the U K .5 M anagem ent still revolves
largely around supervision, “if-then” rewards, and other forms
of control. T h at’s true even of the kinder, gentler M otivation 2.1
approach that whispers sw eetly about things lik e “em pow erm ent”
and “flexib ility.”
Indeed, just consider the very notion of “em powerm ent.” It pre
sumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles
some of it into the w aitin g bowls of grateful employees. But th at’s
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not autonomy. T hat’s just a sligh tly more civilized form of control. Or
take m anagem ent’s embrace of “flex tim e.” Ressler and Thompson call
it a “con gam e,” and th ey’re right. F lexib ility sim ply widens the fences
and occasionally opens the gates. It, too, is little more than control in
sheep’s clothing. The words themselves reflect presumptions that run
against both the texture of the times and the nature of the human con
dition. In short, m anagem ent isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.
Perhaps it ’s tim e to toss the very word “m anagem ent” onto the
lin g u istic ash heap alongside “icebox” and “horseless carriage.” This
era doesn’t call for better m anagem ent. It calls for a renaissance of
self-direction.
T H E FO U R E S S E N T I A L S
| n 20 02 , Scott Farquhar and M ike Cannon-Brookes, two w et-behind-

the-ears A ustralians just out of university, borrowed $1 0 ,0 0 0 on
th eir credit cards to start a software company. They anointed their
venture w ith a bold name— A tlassian, after the Greek titan A tlas,
who bore the world on his shoulders. And they set about creating
a company to compete against some of the big names in enterprise
software. A t the tim e, their venture seemed loony. Today, it seems
inspired. Through its com bination of great com puter code and sm art
business practices, A tlassian now rakes in about $35 m illio n per
year— and employs nearly two hundred people in offices in Sydney,
A m sterdam , and San Francisco.
B ut lik e any good entrepreneur, Cannon-Brookes w alks through
life beneath a cloud of perpetual dissatisfaction. H e’d seen successful
companies stagnate and wished to avoid that fate for his. So to spark
even greater creativity am ong his team , and to m ake sure A tlassian’s
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Autonomy
program m ers were having fun at work, he decided to encourage them

to spend a day w orking on any problem they w anted, even if it wasn’t
part of their regular job.
This offbeat off-day gave birth to several ideas for new products
and p len ty of repairs and patches on existing ones. So Cannon-Brookes
decided to m ake the practice a perm anent part of the A tlassian cu l
ture. Now, once a quarter, the com pany sets aside an entire day when
its engineers can work on any software problem they w ant— only
this tim e, “to g et them out of the day to day,” it m ust be som ething
th at’s not part of their regular job.
A t two P .M . on a Thursday, the day begins. Engineers, in cluding
Cannon-Brookes him self, crash out new code or an elegant hack—
any w ay they w ant, w ith anyone they want. M any work through
the n igh t. Then, at four p .m . on Friday, they show the results to the
rest of the com pany in a w ild-and-w oolly all-hands m eeting stocked
w ith am ple quantities of cold beer and chocolate cake. A tlassian
calls these tw enty-four-hour bursts of freedom and creativity “FedEx
D ays”— because people have to deliver som ething overnight. And
deliver A tlassians have. Over the years, this odd little exercise has
produced an array of software fixes that m igh t otherwise never have
em erged. Says one engineer, “Some of the coolest stuff we have in our
product today has come from FedEx D ays.”
This isn’t a pay-for-performance plan, grounded in the m echanistic
assumptions of M otivation 2.0. It’s an autonom y plan, nicely tuned to
the alternate strains of M otivation 3.0. “W e’ve alw ays taken the posi
tion that money is only something y o u ca n lo s e on,” Cannon-Brookes
told me. “If you don’t pay enough, you can lose people. B ut beyond
that, money is not a motivator. W h at m atters are these other fea
tures.” And w hat a few future-facing businesses are discovering is that
one of these essential features is autonom y— in particular, autonomy
over four aspects of work: w hat people do, when they do it, how they
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do it, and whom they do it w ith. As A tlassian’s experience shows,

Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four
T ’s: their task, their tim e, their technique, and their team.
Task
Cannon-Brookes was still dissatisfied. FedEx Days were working fine,

but they had an inherent weakness. “You b uilt som ething in twenty-
four hours, but you did n ’t get any more tim e to work on it,” he says.
So he and cofounder Farquhar decided to double-down their bet on
employee autonomy. In the spring o f2008, they announced that for the
next six months, Atlassian developers could spend 20 percent of their
tim e— rather than just one intense day— w orking on any project they
wanted. As Cannon-Brookes explained in a blog post to employees:
A startup engineer m ust be all things— he (or she) is a full

tim e software developer and a part tim e product manager/
custom er support guru/internal system s maven. As a com
pany grows, an engineer spends less tim e b u ild in g the things
he personally w ants in the product. O ur hope is that 20%
tim e gives engineers back dedicated stack tim e— of their own
direction— to spend on product innovation, features, plugins,
fixes or additions that they think are the most im portant.6
This practice has a sturdy tradition and a w ell-know n modern

expression. Its pioneer was the Am erican com pany 3M . In the 1930s
and 1940s, 3M ’s president and chairm an was W illiam M cK night,
a fellow who was as unassum ing in his m anner as he was visionary
in his th in kin g. M cK night believed in a sim ple, and at the tim e,
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Autonomy
subversive, credo: “Hire good

people, and leave them alone.” "/As a n e n tre p re n e u r, I'm ble sse d w ith 100%
W ell before it was fashionable a u to n o m y o v e r task, tim e , te c h n iq u e a n d
for managers to flap on about te a m . H ere's th e th in g : I f I m a in ta in th a t
“empowerment,” he made a a u to n o m y , I fa il. I f a il to sh ip . I f a il to excel.
more vigorous case for auton I f a il to fo cu s. I in e v ita b ly e n d u p e ith e r
omy. “Those men and women w ith n o p ro d u c t o r a p ro d u c t th e m a rk e t
to whom we delegate author re je cts. The a r t o f th e a r t is p ic k in g y o u r
ity and responsibility, if they lim its . T hat's th e a u to n o m y I m o s t ch e rish .
are good people, are going The fre e d o m to p ic k m y b o u n d a rie s ."
to want to do their jobs in SETH G O D IN , A u th o r o f Tribes,
their own way,” he wrote P u rp le Cow, and th e w orld's

m ost p o p u la r m a rk e tin g blog
in 1948.7 M cKnight even
encouraged employees to
engage in what he called
“experimental doodling.”
W ith these unorthodox ideas percolating in his m ind, this
un lik ely corporate heretic established a new policy: 3M ’s technical
staff could spend up to 15 percent of their tim e on projects of their
choosing. The in itiative felt so counter to the mores of M otivation
2.0, so seem ingly illic it, that inside the company, it was known as
the “bootlegging policy.” And yet it worked. These w alled gardens
of autonom y soon became fertile fields for a harvest of innovations—
in clu d in g Post-it notes. Scientist A rt Fry came up w ith his idea for
the ubiquitous stickie not in one of his regular assignm ents, but
durin g his 15 percent tim e. Today, Post-its are a m onum ental busi
ness: 3M offers more than six hundred Post-it products in more than
one hundred countries. (And th eir cultural im pact m ig h t be even
greater. Consider: But for M cK n igh t’s early push for autonomy, w e’d
be liv in g in a world w ithout any sm all yellow squares stuck to our
com puter monitors. A c h illin g thought indeed.) A ccording to 3M ’s
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former head of research and developm ent, most of the inventions

that the company relies on even today em erged from those periods of
bootlegging and experim ental doodling.8
M cK n igh t’s innovation remains in place at 3M . B ut only a sur
p risin gly sm all num ber of other companies have moved in this direc
tion, despite its proven results. The best-known com pany to embrace
it is Google, which has long encouraged engineers to spend one day a
w eek w orking on a side project. Some Googlers use their “20 percent
tim e ” to fix an existing product, but m ost use it to develop some
th in g en tirely new. O f course, Google doesn’t sign aw ay the in tellec
tu al property rights to w h at’s created d urin g that 20 percent— w hich
is w ise. In a typ ical year, more than h alf of G oogle’s new offerings are
birthed d urin g this period of pure autonomy. For exam ple, scientist
K rishna Bharat, frustrated by how difficult it was to find news stories
online, created Google N ews in his 20 percent tim e. The site now
receives m illions of visitors every day. Former Google engineer Paul
B ucheit created G m ail, now one of the w o rld’s most popular e-m ail
program s, as his 20 percent project. M any other Google products
share sim ilar creation stories— among them O rkut (G oogle’s social
netw orking software), Google Talk (its instant m essage application),
Google Sky (which allows astronom ically inclined users to browse
pictures of the universe), and Google Translate (its translation soft
ware for m obile devices). As Google engineer Alec Proudfoot, whose
own 20 percent project aim ed at boosting the efficiency of hybrid
cars, put it in a television interview : “Ju s t about all the good ideas
here at Google have bubbled up from 20 percent tim e .”9
Back at A tlassian, the experim ent in 20 percent tim e seemed to
work. In w hat turned out to be a yearlong trial, developers launched
forty-eight new projects. So in 2009, Cannon-Brookes decided to
m ake this dose of task autonom y a perm anent feature of A tlassian work
life. The decision d id n ’t sit w ell w ith everyone. By Cannon-Brookes’s
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Autonomy
back-of-the-blog calculations, seventy engineers, spending 20 percent

of their tim e over just a six-m onth period, am ounted to an invest
m ent of $1 m illion. The company's chief financial officer was aghast.
Some project managers— despite A tlassian’s forw ard-thinking ways,
the company still uses the m-word— weren’t happy, because it meant
ceding some of their control over employees. W h en a few wanted
to track em ployees’ tim e to m ake sure they did n ’t abuse the p rivi
lege, Cannon-Brookes said no. “T hat was too controlling. I wanted to
back our engineers and take it on faith that they’ll do good th in gs.”
Besides, he says, “People are way more efficient about 20 percent tim e
than regular work tim e. They say, ‘I’m not going to [exp letive]in g do
anything like read newsfeeds or do Facebook.’ ”
These days, when a finance guy, pearls of sweat ro lling from his
green eyeshades, objects to the price tag, Cannon-Brookes has a ready
response: “I show him a long list of things w e’ve delivered. I show
him th at we have zero turnover in engineering. And I show him that
we have h ig h ly m otivated engineers who are alw ays tryin g to perfect
and im prove our product. ”
Autonom y over task is one of the essential aspects of the M otiva
tion 3.0 approach to work. And it isn ’t reserved only for technol
ogy companies. A t Georgetown U niversity H ospital in W ashington,
D .C ., for instance, m any nurses have the freedom to conduct th eir own
research projects, which in turn have changed a num ber of the hos
p ita l’s program s and p o licies.10 Autonom y measures can work in a
range of fields— and offer a prom ising source for innovations and
even in stitutio nal reforms.
Initiatives lik e FedEx Days and sanctioned side projects aren’t
alw ays easy to execute in the day-to-day m aw of serving customers,
shipping products, and solving problems. B ut th ey’re becom ing
urgent in an economy that dem ands nonroutine, creative, conceptual
ab ilities— as any artist or designer would agree. Autonom y over task
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has long been critical to their ab ility to create. And good leaders (as
opposed to com petent “m anagers”) understand this in their bones.
Case in point: George N elson, who was the design director at H er
m an M iller, the iconic Am erican furniture m aker, for a few decades.
H e once laid down five sim ple tenets that he believed led to great
design. One of these principles could serve as a rally in g cry for Type
I’s ethic of autonom y over task: “You decide what you w ill m ake.”
Time
Ever wonder why lawyers, as a group, are so miserable? Some social

scientists have— and they’ve offered three explanations. One involves
pessim ism . Being pessim istic is almost always a recipe for low levels of
w hat psychologists call “subjective w ell-bein g.” It's also a detrim ent
in most professions. But as M artin Seligm an has w ritten, “There is one
g larin g exception: pessim ists do better at law .” In other words, an atti
tude that makes someone less happy as a hum an being actually makes
her more effective as a law yer.11 A second reason: Most other enter
prises are positive-sum. If I sell you something you w ant and enjoy,
w e’re both better off. Law, by contrast, is often (though not always)
a zero-sum gam e: Because somebody wins, somebody else m ust lose.
B ut the third reason m ig h t offer the best explanation of all— and
help us understand w hy so few attorneys exem plify Type I behavior.
Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision
latitu d e .” Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices,
and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, i t ’s another way of
describing autonom y— and lawyers are g lu m and cranky because
they don’t have much of it. The deprivation starts early. A 2007 study
of two Am erican law schools found that over the three-year period in
school, students’ overall w ell-being plum m eted— in large part because
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Autonomy
their need for autonom y was

thw arted. B ut students who " N o th in g is m o re im p o r ta n t to m y success
had greater autonom y over th a n c o n tro llin g m y sch e du le . I'm m o s t
their course selection, their c re a tiv e fro m fiv e to n in e a .m . If I had a
assignm ents, and their rela b o ss o r c o -w o rk e rs , th e y w o u ld ru in m y
tions w ith professors showed b e s t h o u rs o n e w a y o r a n o th e r."
far less steep declines and S C O TT A D A M S
actually posted better grades D ilb e r t c re ato r
and bar exam scores.12

A las, at the heart of p ri
vate legal practice is perhaps the most autonom y-crushing mechanism
im aginable: the billable hour. Most lawyers— and nearly all lawyers
in large, prestigious firms— m ust keep scrupulous track, often in
six-m inute increments, of their tim e. If they fail to b ill enough hours,
their jobs are in jeopardy. As a result, their focus inevitably veers from
the output of their work (solving a clien t’s problem) to its input (piling
up as m any hours as possible). If the rewards come from tim e, then
tim e is what firms w ill get. These sorts of high-stakes, measurable
goals can drain intrinsic m otivation, sap individual in itiative, and even
encourage unethical behavior. “If one is expected to b ill more than two
thousand hours per year,” former U .S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
W illiam Rehnquist once said, “there are bound to be tem ptations to
exaggerate the hours actually put in .”b
The billable hour is a relic of M otivation 2.0. It makes some sense
for routine tasks— whether fitting doors onto the body of a Ford Tau
rus or adding up deductions on a sim ple tax form— because there’s a
tigh t connection between how much tim e goes in and how much work
comes out. And if your starting assumption is that workers’ default set
ting is to shirk, m onitoring their t im e can keep them on their toes.
B ut the b illable hour has little place in M otivation 3.0. For
nonroutine tasks, in clud ing law, the lin k between how m uch tim e
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somebody spends and w hat that somebody produces is irregular and

unpredictable. Im agine requiring inventor Dean Kam en or actress
H elen M irren to b ill for their tim e. If we begin from an altern a
tive, and more accurate, presum ption— th at people w ant to do good
work— then we ought to let them focus on the work itse lf rather than
the tim e it takes them to do it. Already, a few law firms are m oving
in this new, more Type I direction— charging a flat rate rather than
a tim e-based fee— w ith the presiding partner of one of N ew York’s
leading law firms recently declaring, “This is the tim e to get rid of
the b illable hour.”14
If the b illable hour has an antithesis, it ’s the results-only work
environm ent of the kind that Je ff G unther has introduced at his
com panies. The first large company to go RO W E was Best B uy—
not in its stores, but in its corporate offices. Like 3M ’s 15 percent
tim e, Best B u y’s ROW E experim ent began as som ething of a rogue
project launched by Ressler and Thompson, whom I m entioned ear
lier and who have since become ROW E gurus, takin g their message
of autonom y around the world. Best B u y’s headquarters in R ichfield,
M innesota, are airy, modern, and replete w ith a concierge, cafes, and
dry cleaner. B ut the com pany had a reputation for punishing hours
and intrusive bosses— and it was paying the price in lost talent.
Best B u y’s then CEO Brad Anderson q u ie tly agreed to Ressler and
Thom pson’s weird proposal, because it encouraged “people to con
trib ute rather than just show up and grin d out their d ays.”15
Today, Best B uy’s headquarters has fewer people w orking a regu
lar schedule than it has those w orking a RO W E un-schedule. And
even though retail electronics is a b rutally com petitive industry, Best
B uy has held its own both in the m arketplace and in its quest for
talen t. Reporting on the com pany’s RO W E results in the H arvard
B usiness R eview , Tamara Erickson writes:
10 0
Autonomy
Salaried people put in as m uch tim e as it takes to do their

work. H ourly em ployees in the program work a set num ber of
hours to com ply w ith federal labor regulations, but they get
to choose when. Those em ployees report better relationships
w ith fam ily and friends, more com pany loyalty, and more fo c u s
and energy. P roductivity has increased by 35% , and voluntary
turnover is 320 basis points lower than in teams that have
not made the change. Employees say they don’t know whether
they work fewer hours— th ey’ve stopped co un tin g.16
W ith o ut sovereignty over our tim e, i t ’s nearly im possible to have

autonom y over our lives. A few Type I organizations have begun to
recognize this truth about the hum an condition and to realign their
practices. More, no doubt, w ill follow. “In the past, work was defined
p rim arily by p u ttin g in tim e, and secondarily on g e ttin g results. W e
need to flip that m odel,” R essler told me. “No m atter w hat kind
of business you’re in, it's tim e to throw aw ay the tardy slips, tim e
clocks, and outdated in d ustrial-age th in k in g .”
T e c h n iq u e
W hen you call a custom er service line to com plain about your cable
television b ill or to check the whereabouts of that blender you
ordered, the phone usually rings in a colorless cavern known as a call
center. The person who answers the call, a custom er service represen
tative, has a tough jo b . H e typ ically sits for hours am ong a warren
of cram ped cubicles— headset strapped on, a d iet soda by his side.
The pay is paltry. And the people the rep encounters on the phone—
one after another after another— generally aren’t rin gin g up to offer
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kudos or to ask about the rep’s weekend plans. T h ey’ve got a grip e, a
frustration, or a problem that needs solving. R igh t. Now.
If that w eren’t tryin g enough, call center reps have little decision
latitud e and their jobs are often the very definition of routine. W hen
a call comes in, they listen to the caller— and then, in most cases, tap
a few buttons on their com puter to retrieve a script. Then they follow
that script, sometimes word for word, in the hope of g ettin g the caller
off the lin e as quickly as possible. It can be deadening work, made
drearier still because managers in m any call centers, in an effort to
boost productivity, listen in on reps’ conversations and m onitor how
long each call lasts. L ittle wonder, then, that call centers in the U nited
States and the U K have annual turnover rates that average about 35
percent, double the rate for other jobs. In some call centers the annual
turnover rate exceeds 100 percent, m eaning that, on average, none of
the people working there today w ill be there a year from now.
Tony H sieh, founder of the online shoe retailer Zappos.com (now
part of Amazon.com), thought there was a better w ay to recruit,
prepare, and challenge such employees. So new hires at Zappos go
through a week of train in g. Then, at the end of those seven days,
H sieh m akes them an offer. If they feel Zappos isn’t for them and
w ant to leave, h e'll pay them $ 2 ,0 0 0 — no hard feelings. H sieh is
hacking the M otivation 2 .0 operating system lik e a b rillian t and
benevolent teenage com puter whiz. H e’s using an “if-then” reward
not to m otivate people to perform better, but to weed out those
who aren’t fit for a M otivation 3.0—style workplace. The people who
rem ain receive decent pay, and just as im portant, they have auton
om y over technique. Zappos doesn’t m onitor its custom er service
em ployees’ call tim es or require them to use scripts. The reps handle
calls the w ay they want. T heir job is to serve the custom er w ell; how
they do it is up to them.
The results of this em phasis on autonom y over technique? Turn
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Autonomy
over at Zappos is m in im al. And although it ’s s till young, Zappos

consistently ranks as one of the best companies for custom er service
in the U nited States— ahead of better-known names lik e C adillac,
BM W , and A pple and roughly equal to ritzy brands lik e Jag u ar and
the R itz-C arlto n .17 N ot bad for a shoe company based in the Nevada
desert.
W h at Zappos is doing is part of a sm all but grow ing move to
restore some measure of in d ivid ual freedom in jobs usually known
for the lack of it. For instance, w h ile m any enterprises are offshoring
work to low-cost providers overseas, some companies are reversing
the trend by b eginning w h at’s known as “hom eshoring.” Instead of
requirin g custom er service reps to report to a single large call center,
th ey’re routing the calls to the em ployees’ homes. This cuts com
m u tin g tim e for staff, removes them from physical m onitoring, and
provides far greater autonom y over how they do th eir jobs.
The Am erican airline JetB lu e was one of the first to try this
approach. From its launch in 2000, JetB lu e has relied on telephone
customer service employees who work at home. And from its launch,
JetB lu e has earned customer service rankings far ahead of its com
petitors. Productivity and job satisfaction are generally higher in
homeshoring than in conventional arrangements— in part because
employees are more comfortable and less monitored at home. B ut it ’s
also because this autonomy-centered approach draws from a deeper
pool of talent. M any homeshore employees are parents, students, retir
ees, and people w ith disabilities— those who want to work, but need
to do it their own way. According to one report, between 70 and 80
percent of home-based customer service agents have college degrees—
double the percentage among people working in traditional call cen
ters. Ventures like A lpine Access, PH H Arval, and LiveOps, which
run customer service departm ents for a range of companies, report that
after adopting this method, their recruiting costs fall to alm ost zero.
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Prospective employees come to them. And now these home-based

customer service reps are w orking for a number of U .S. companies—
including 1-800-Flowers, J . Crew, Office Depot, even the Internal
Revenue Service— handling customer inquiries the w ay they choose.18
As in any effective M otivation 3.0 workplace, it ’s their call.
Team
W hatever your place in the birth order, consider w hat it ’s like to be

the third child in a family. You don’t get a say in choosing the people
around you. T hey’re there when you arrive. Worse, one or two of them
m ig h t not be so glad to see you. And g ettin g rid of even just one of
them is usually impossible.
Taking a new job and
“A u to n o m y o v e r w h a t we d o is m o s t
holding most jobs are sim i
im p o rta n t. The b ig g e s t d iffe re n c e b e tw e e n
lar. Enterprising souls m ight
w o rk in g f o r o th e r s tu d io s a n d ru n n in g
be able to scratch out some
m y o w n h a s been th e fa c t t h a t I ca n
autonomy over task, tim e, and
c h o o s e w h a t jo b we ta k e o n a n d w h a t
technique— but autonomy
p ro d u c t, se rvice , o r in s t it u tio n we p ro m o te .
over team is a taller order.
This I fin d th e s in g le m o s t im p o r ta n t
T h at’s one reason people are
q u e s tio n : W hen I'm clo se to th e c o n te n t,
drawn to entrepreneurship—
re se a rc h be co m es easy, m e e tin g s b e com e
the chance to build a team of
in te re s tin g (p e o p le w h o p ro d u c e in te re s tin g
their own. B ut even in more
p ro d u c ts o r se rv ic e s a re m o s tly in te re s tin g
traditional settings, although
th e m se lve s), a n d I d o n 't h a ve to be
far from typical yet, a few
in v o lv e d in fa ls e a d v e rtis in g ."
organizations are discovering
S TE FA N S A G M E IS T E R the virtues of offering people
Designer
some amount of freedom over
those w ith whom they work.
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Autonomy
For exam ple, at the organic grocery chain W hole Foods, the peo
ple who are nom inally in charge of each departm ent don’t do the
h irin g. T hat task falls to a departm ent’s em ployees. After a job can
didate has worked a th irty-d ay trial period on a team , the prospective
team m ates vote on w hether to hire that person full-tim e. A t W. L.
Gore & Associates, the m akers of the GORE-TEX fabric and another
exam ple of M otivation 3.0 in action, anybody who wants to rise in
the ranks and lead a team m ust assem ble people w illin g to work
w ith her.19
The ab ility to put together a pick-up basketball team of com
pany talent is another attraction of 20 percent tim e. These in itiatives
usually slice across the organization chart, connecting people who
share an interest, if not a departm ent. As Google engineer Bharat
M ediratta told T he N ew York T im es, “If your 20 percent idea is a
new product, it ’s usually p retty easy to just find a few like-m inded
people and start coding aw ay.” And when pushing for a more sys
tem ic change in the organization, M ediratta says autonom y over
team is even more im portant. Those efforts require what he calls a
“g ro u p let”— a sm all, self-organized team that has alm ost no budget
and even less authority, but th at tries to change som ething w ith in
the company. For instance, M ediratta formed a testin g grouplet to
encourage engineers throughout the company to im plem ent a more
efficient way to test com puter code. This inform al band of coders, a
team b u ilt autonom ously w ithout direction from the top, “slowly
turned the organization on its ax is.”20
S till, the desire for autonom y can often collide w ith other o b liga
tions. One surprise as A tlassian ran the numbers on its task autonom y
experim ent was that most em ployees came in sub stan tially under the
20 percent figure. The m ain reason? They d id n ’t w ant to let down
their current team m ates by abandoning ongoing projects.
A lthough autonom y over team is the least developed of the four
10 5
DRIVE
T ’s, the ever-escalating power of social networks and the rise of m obile
apps now m ake this brand of autonom y easier to achieve— and in
ways that reach beyond a sin gle organization. The open-source proj
ects I m entioned in Chapter 1‘, in which ad hoc team s self-assemble
to build a new browser or create better server software, are a potent
exam ple. And once again , the science affirms the value of som ething
tradition al businesses have been slow to embrace. A m ple research has
shown th at people w orking in self-organized team s are more satis
fied than those w orking in inherited team s.21 Likew ise, studies by
Deci and others have shown that people h igh in intrinsic m otiva
tion are better coworkers.22 And that makes the possibilities on this
front enormous. If you w ant to work w ith more Type I s, the best
strategy is to become one yourself. Autonomy, it turns out, can be
contagious.
T H E A R T OF A U T O N O M Y
T hink for a m om ent about the great artists of the last hundred
5 years and how they worked— people lik e Pablo Picasso, Georgia
O ’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. U nlike for the rest of us, M otivation
2.0 was never their operating system . Nobody told them : You m ust
p a in t th is sort o f picture. You m ust begin p a in tin g p recisely a t eigh t-th irty
A.M. You m ust p a in t w ith the people w e select to work w ith you. A nd you
m ust p a in t th is w ay. The very idea is ludicrous.
B ut you know w hat? It's ludicrous for you, too. W hether yo u’re
fixing sinks, rin gin g up groceries, sellin g cars, or w ritin g a lesson
plan, you and I need autonom y just as deeply as a great painter.
However, encouraging autonom y doesn’t mean discouraging
accountability. W hatever operating system is in place, people m ust
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Autonomy
be accountable for their work. B ut there are different ways to achieve

this end, each b u ilt on different assum ptions about who we are deep
down. M otivation 2.0 assumed th at if people had freedom, they
would shirk— and that autonom y was a w ay to bypass accountabil
ity. M otivation 3.0 begins w ith a different assum ption. It presumes
that people w a n t to be accountable— and that m aking sure they have
control over th eir task, their tim e, their technique, and their team is
a pathw ay to that destination.
O f course, because most workplaces s till reverberate w ith the
assumptions of the old operating system , transitioning to autonom y
won’t— often can’t— happen in one fell swoop. If we pluck people
out of controlling environm ents, when th ey’ve known nothing else,
and plop them in a RO W E or an environm ent of undiluted auton
omy, th ey’ll struggle. O rganizations m ust provide, as R ichard Ryan
puts it, “scaffolding” to help every em ployee find his footing to m ake
the transition.
W h a t’s more, different in dividuals w ill prize different aspects of
autonomy. Some m igh t crave autonom y over a task; others m igh t
prefer autonom y over the team. As Zappos CEO H sieh told m e by
e-m ail, “Studies have shown that perceived control is an im portant
component of one’s happiness. However, what people feel lik e they
w ant control over really varies, so I don't th ink there’s one aspect of
autonom y th at’s universally the m ost im portant. Different in d iv id u
als have different desires, so the best strategy for an em ployer would
be to figure out w h at’s im portant to each individual em ployee.”
S till, however those in d ivid ual desires express them selves on the
surface, they grow from common roots. W e're born to be players,
not pawns. W e’re meant to be autonomous individuals, not in d iv id
ual automatons. W e’re designed to be Type I. B ut outside forces—
in clud in g the very idea that we need to be “m anaged”— have con
spired to change our default settin g and turn us into Type X. If we
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update the environm ents w e’re in— not only at w ork, but also at
school and at home— and if leaders recognize both the truth of the
hum an condition and the science that supports it, we can return our
selves and our colleagues to our natural state.
“The course of hum an history has alw ays moved in the direc
tion of greater freedom. And there’s a reason for th at— because it ’s
in our nature to push for it ,” Ryan told m e. “If we were just plastic
lik e [som e] people th in k , this w ouldn’t be happening. B ut some
body stands in front of a tank in China. W om en, w ho’ve been denied
autonomy, keep advocating for rights. This is the course of history.
This is w hy u ltim ately hum an nature, if it ever realizes itself, w ill do
so by becom ing more autonom ous.”
10 8
Mastery
You need not see what someone is doing

to know i f it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:

a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a prim ary incision,

a clerk completing a bill o f lading,
w ear the same rapt expression, forgetting

themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,

that eye-on-the-object look.
— W. H. Auden
ne sum m er m orning in 1944, M ihaly C sikszentm ihalyi, age

O ten, stood on a train platform in Budapest, H ungary, w ith his
mother, two brothers, and about seventy relatives w ho’d come to
see them off. W orld W ar II was ragin g, and H ungary, an am biva
lent m em ber of the A xis, was being squeezed from every p o litical
and geographic corner. N azi soldiers were occupying the country in
retaliation for H un gary’s secret peace negotiations w ith the U nited
DRIVE
States and Great B ritain. M eanw hile, Soviet troops were advancing
on the capital city.
It was tim e to leave. So the foursome boarded a train for Venice,
Italy, where C sikszentm ihalyi’s father, a dip lo m at, was w orking. As
the train rum bled southwest, bombs exploded in the distance. B u l
lets ripped through the train ’s windows, w hile a rifle-toting soldier
on board fired back at the attackers. The ten-year-old crouched under
his seat, terrified but also a little annoyed.
“It struck me at that point that grown-ups had really no idea how
to liv e ,” C sikszentm ihalyi told me some sixty-five years later.
H is train would turn out to be the last to cross the Danube R iver
for m any years. Shortly after its departure, air strikes destroyed H un
g a ry ’s m ajor bridges. The C sikszentm ihalyis were w ell educated and
w ell connected, but the w ar flattened th eir lives. O f the relatives
on the train platform that m orning, more than h alf would be dead
five months later. One of C sikszentm ihalyi’s brothers spent six years
doing hard labor in the U ral M ountains. Another was killed fighting
the Soviets.
“The whole experience got me th in k in g ,” C sikszentm ihalyi said,
recallin g his ten-year-old self. “There has got to be a better w ay to
live than th is.”
F R O M C O M P L I A N C E TO E N G A G E M E N T
he opposite of autonom y is control. And since they sit at differ

ent poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward dif
ferent destinations. Control leads to com pliance; autonom y leads
to engagem ent. And this distinction leads to the second elem ent
no
Mastery
of Type I behavior: m astery— the desire to get better and better at

som ething that m atters.
As I explained in Part One, M otivation 2 .0 ’s goal was to encourage
people to do p articular things in particular ways— that is, to g e t them
to comply. And for that objective, few m otivators are more effective
than a nice bunch of carrots and the threat of an occasional stick.
This was rarely a prom ising route to self-actualization, of course.
B ut as an economic strategy, it had a certain logic. For routine tasks,
the sort of w ork that defined m ost of the tw entieth century, g ain in g
com pliance usually worked just fine.
B ut that was then. For the definitional tasks of the tw enty-first
century, such a strategy falls short, often w oefully short. Solving
complex problem s requires an in q u irin g m ind and the w illin gn ess
to experim ent one’s w ay to a fresh solution. W here M otivation 2.0
sought com pliance, M otivation 3.0 seeks engagem ent. O nly engage
m ent can produce mastery. And the pursuit of mastery, an im portant
but often dorm ant part of our third drive, has become essential in
m aking one’s w ay in today’s economy.
U nfortunately, despite sw eet-sm elling words lik e “empower
m en t” that waft through corporate corridors, the modern w orkplace’s
most notable feature m ay be its lack of engagem ent and its disregard
for mastery. G allu p ’s extensive research on the subject shows that
in the U nited States, more than 50 percent of employees are not
engaged at w ork— and nearly 20 percent are actively disengaged.
The cost of all this disengagem ent: about $300 b illio n a year in lost
p roductivity— a sum larger than the GDP of Portugal, Singapore, or
Israel.1 Yet in com parative term s, the U nited States looks lik e a veri
table haven of Type I behavior at work. According to the consulting
firm M cK insey & Co., in some countries as little as 2 to 3 percent of
the workforce is h igh ly engaged in their w ork.2
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E qually im portant, engagem ent as a route to m astery is a power

ful force in our personal lives. W h ile com plying can be an effective
strategy for physical survival, i t ’s a lousy one for personal fulfill
m ent. L iving a satisfying life requires more than sim p ly m eeting the
dem ands of those in control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we
have w ay too much com pliance and w ay too little engagem ent. The
former m ig h t get you through the day, but only the latter w ill
get you through the n igh t. And that brings us back to Csikszent-
m ih a ly i’s story.
In his early teens, after w itnessing the atrocities of N azi G ermany
and the Soviet takeover of his country, C sikszentm ihalyi was under
standably weary of com pliance and looking for engagem ent. B ut he
w ouldn’t find it at school. H e dropped out of high school at thirteen.
For nearly a decade, he worked in various W estern European coun
tries at a series of jobs, some odder than others, to support him self.
And hoping to answer his youthful question about a better w ay to
live, he read everything he could get his hands on in religion and
philosophy. W h at he learned d id n ’t satisfy him . It w asn’t u n til he
inadvertently stum bled into a lecture by none other than Carl Ju n g
th at he heard about the field of psychology and decided that it m ig h t
hold the secrets he sought.
So in 1956, at the age of tw enty-tw o, C sikszentm ihalyi set off for
the U nited States to study psychology. He arrived in Chicago, a high
school dropout w ith $1.25 in his pocket whose only fam iliarity
w ith the English language came from reading P ogo comic strips.
H ungarian contacts in Chicago helped him find a job and a place
to live. H is know ledge of Latin, German, and P ogo helped him pass
the Illinois high school equivalency test in a language he neither
spoke nor read. He enrolled in the U niversity of Illin o is-C hicago ,
took classes durin g the day, worked as a hotel auditor at n igh t,
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Mastery
and even tually wound up at the U niversity of Chicago psychology

departm ent, where— just nine years after settin g foot in A m erica—
he earned a Ph.D.
B ut C sikszentm ihalyi resisted rafting down the m ain currents of
his field. As he told me one spring m orning not long ago, he wanted
to explore “the positive, innovative, creative approach to life instead
of the rem edial, pathological view that Sigm und Freud had or the
m echanistic w ork” of B. F. Skinner and others who reduced behavior
to sim ple stim ulus and response. He began by w ritin g about creativ
ity. C reativity took him into the study of play. And his exploration
of p lay unlocked an in sigh t about the hum an experience that would
m ake him famous.
In the m idst of play, m any people enjoyed w hat C sikszent
m ih alyi called “autotelic experiences”— from the Greek auto (self)
and telos (goal or purpose). In an autotelic experience, the goal is
self-fulfilling; the activ ity is its own reward. Painters he observed
durin g his Ph.D. research, C sikszentm ihalyi said, were so enthralled
in w hat they were doing that they seemed to be in a trance. For them ,
tim e passed q u ickly and self-consciousness dissolved. He sought out
other people who gravitated to these sorts of pursuits— rock clim b
ers, soccer players, sw im m ers, spelunkers— and interview ed them to
discover w hat made an activity autotelic. It was frustrating. “W hen
people try to recall how it felt to clim b a m ountain or p lay a great
m usical piece,” C sikszentm ihalyi later wrote, “their stories are
usually quite stereotyped and un in sig h tfu l.”3 He needed a w ay to
probe people’s experiences in the m oment. And in the m id -1970s,
a bold new technology— one th at any tw elve-year-old now would
find lau gh in g ly retrograde— cam e to the rescue: the electronic
pager.
C sikszentm ihalyi, who by then was teaching at the U niversity of
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Chicago and running his own

“ T h ro u g h o u t m y a th le tic s career, th e
psychology lab, clipped on a
o v e ra ll g o a l w a s a lw a y s to be a b e tte r
pager and asked his gradu
a th le te th a n I w as a t t h a t m o m e n t j-
ate students to beep him
w h e th e r n e x t week, n e x t m o n th o r n e x t
randomly several times each
year. The im p ro v e m e n t was th e g o a l. The
day. W henever the pager
m e d a l w a s s im p ly th e u ltim a te re w a rd fo r
sounded, he recorded what
a c h ie v in g t h a t g o a l."
he was doing and how he
S E B A S T IA N COE was feeling. “It was so much
M id d le -d is ta n e e runn er
fun,” he recalled in his office
and t w o -tim e O lym pic
gold m edal w in n e r
at the Claremont Graduate
U niversity in southern C ali
fornia, where he now teaches.
“You got such a detailed pic
ture of how people liv ed ,” On the basis of this test run, he developed
a m ethodology called the Experience Sam pling M ethod. Csikszent-
m ih alyi w ould page people eigh t tim es a day at random intervals
and ask them to w rite in a booklet th eir answers to several short
questions about w hat they were doing, who they were w ith , and
how th ey’d describe their state of m ind. Put the findings together
for seven days and you had a flip book, a m ini-m ovie, of someone’s
week. Assemble the individual findings and you had an entire library
of hum an experiences.
From these results, C sikszentm ihalyi began to peel back the la y
ers of those autotelic experiences. Perhaps equally significant, he
replaced that wonky G reek-derived adjective w ith a word he found
people using to describe these optim al moments: flow. The highest,
most satisfying experiences in people’s lives were when they were
in flow. And this previously unacknowledged m ental state, which
seemed so inscrutable and transcendent, was actually fairly easy to
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Mastery
unpack. In flow, goals are clear. You have to reach the top of the
m ountain, h it the ball across the net, or m old the clay just righ t.
Feedback is im m ediate. The m ountaintop gets closer or farther, the
ball sails in or out of bounds, the pot you’re throw ing comes out
smooth or uneven.
M ost im portant, in flow, the relationship between w hat a person
had to do and w hat he could do was perfect. The challenge w asn’t too
easy. Nor was it too difficult. It was a notch or two beyond his cur
rent ab ilities, which stretched the body and m ind in a way th at made
the effort itse lf the most delicious reward. That balance produced a
degree of focus and satisfaction th at easily surpassed other, more quo
tid ian , experiences. In flow, people lived so deeply in the m oment,
and felt so u tterly in control, that their sense of tim e, place, and even
self m elted away. They were autonomous, of course. B ut more than
that, they were engaged. They were, as the poet W. H. Auden wrote,
“forgetting them selves in a function.”
M aybe this state of m ind was what that ten-year-old boy was
seeking as th at train rolled through Europe. M aybe reaching flow,
not for a single m om ent but as an ethic for liv in g — m ain tain in g
that beautiful “eye-on-the-object look” to achieve m astery as a cook,
a surgeon, or a clerk— was the answer. M aybe this was the way to
live.
G O L D I L O C K S ON A C A R G O S H I P
; everal years ago— he can’t recall exactly when— C sikszentm ihalyi

.. was invited to Davos, Sw itzerland, by Klaus Schwab, who
runs an annual conclave of the global power elite in that city.
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Jo in in g him on the trip were

"The d e sire to do s o m e th in g b e ca u se yo u three other U niversity of
f in d i t d e e p ly s a tis fy in g a n d p e rs o n a lly Chicago faculty m embers—
c h a lle n g in g in s p ire s th e h ig h e s t le ve ls o f G ary Becker, George Stigler,
c re a tiv ity , w h e th e r it's in th e a rts , sciences, and M ilton Friedm an— all
o r b usiness. Qf them economists, all of
TE R ES A A M A B IL E them winners of the Nobel
Professor, H arvard U niversity Prize. The five men gathered
for dinner one n igh t and at
the end of the m eal, Schwab
asked the academ ics w hat they considered the most im portant issue
in modern economics.
“To m y incredulous surprise,” C sikszentm ihalyi recounted,
“Becker, Stigler, and Friedm an all ended up saying a variation of
‘T here’s som ething m issin g ,’ ” that for all its explanatory power,
economics still failed to offer a rich enough account of behavior, even
in business settings.
Csikszentm ihalyi sm iled and com plim ented his colleagues on
their perspicacity. The concept of flow, which he introduced in the
m id-1970s, was not an im m ediate game-changer. It gained some trac
tion in 1990 when Csikszentm ihalyi wrote his first book on the topic
for a wide audience and gained a small band of followers in the business
world. However, p uttin g this notion into place in the real operations
of real organizations has been slower going. After all, M otivation 2.0
has little room for a concept like flow. The Type X operating system
doesn’t oppose people taking on optim al challenges on the job, but it
suggests that such moments are happy accidents rather than necessary
conditions for people to do great work.
B ut ever so slowly the ground m ight be shifting. As the data on
worker disengagem ent earlier in the chapter reveal, the costs— in
both human satisfaction and organizational health— are high when a
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Mastery
workplace is a no-flow zone. T h at’s w hy a few enterprises are tryin g to

do things differently. As F ast C om pany m agazine has noted, a number
of companies, including M icrosoft, Patagonia, and Toyota, have real
ized that creating flow-friendly environments that help people move
toward m astery can increase productivity and satisfaction at w ork.4
For exam ple, Stefan Falk, a vice president at Ericsson, the Swedish
telecom m unications concern, used the principles of flow to smooth a
m erger of the com pany’s business units. He persuaded m anagers to
configure work assignm ents so th at employees had clear objectives
and a way to g et quick feedback. And instead of m eeting w ith their
charges for once-a-year performance reviews, m anagers sat down w ith
em ployees one-on-one six tim es a year, often for as long as ninety
m inutes, to discuss their level of engagem ent and path toward mas
tery. The flow-centered strategy worked w ell enough that Ericsson
began using it in offices around the world. A fter th at, Falk moved to
Green Cargo, an enormous logistics and shipping company in Swe
den. There, he developed a m ethod of train in g m anagers in how flow
worked. Then he required them to m eet w ith staff once a m onth to
get a sense of whether people were overwhelmed or underwhelm ed
w ith their work— and to adjust assignm ents to help them find flow.
A fter two years of m anagerial revam ping, state-owned Green Cargo
became profitable for the first tim e in 125 years— and executives cite
its newfound flow centricity as a key reason.5
In addition, a study of 11,000 industrial scientists and engineers
w orking at companies in the U nited States found that the desire for
in tellectu al challenge— that is, the urge to m aster som ething new
and en gagin g— was the best predictor of productivity. Scientists
m otivated by this in trin sic desire filed significantly more patents
than those whose m ain m otivation was money, even controlling for
the am ount of effort each group expended.6 (That is, the extrinsically
m otivated group worked as long and as hard as their more Type I
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colleagues. They just accom plished less— perhaps because they spent
less of their work tim e in flow.)
And then there’s Jenova Chen, a young gam e designer who, in
20 06 , wrote his MFA thesis on C sikszen tm ih alyi’s theory. Chen
believed that video gam es held the prom ise to deliver quintessen
tial flow experiences, but that too m any gam es required an alm ost
obsessive level of com m itm ent. W h y not, he thought, design a gam e
to bring the flow sensation to more casual gam ers? U sin g his the
sis project as his laboratory, Chen created a gam e in which players
use a com puter mouse to guid e an on-screen am oeba-like organism
through a surreal ocean landscape as it gobblies other creatures and
slow ly evolves into a h igher form. W h ile most gam es require p lay
ers to proceed through a fixed and predeterm ined series of sk ill lev
els, Chen’s allows them to advance and explore any way they desire.
And un like gam es in w hich failure ends the session, in Chen’s gam e
failure m erely pushes the player to a level better m atched to her a b il
ity. Chen calls his gam e flOw. And i t ’s been a huge h it. People have
played the free online version of the gam e more than three m illion
tim es. (You can find it at http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/).
The paid version, designed for the PlayStation gam e console, has
generated more than 35 0 ,0 0 0 downloads and collected a shelf full
of awards. Chen used the gam e to launch his own firm, thatgam e-
company, b u ilt around both flow and flOw, that q u ickly won a
three-gam e developm ent deal from Sony, som ething alm ost unheard
of for an unknown start-up run by a couple of tw enty-six-year-old
California gam e designers.
Green Cargo, thatgam ecom pany, and the companies em ploying
the patent-cranking scientists typ ically use two tactics that their
less savvy competitors do not. First, they provide employees w ith
w hat I call “G oldilocks tasks”— challenges that are not too hot and
not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly sim ple. One source
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Mastery
of frustration in the w orkplace is the frequent m ism atch between

what people m ust do and w hat people can do. W hen w hat they
m ust do exceeds their cap ab ilities, the result is anxiety. W h en what
they m ust do falls short of their cap ab ilities, the result is boredom.
(Indeed, C sikszentm ihalyi titled his first book on autotelic experi
ences B eyon d B oredom a n d A nxiety .) B ut when the m atch is just rig h t,
the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow. G oldilocks
tasks offer us the powerful experience of in h ab itin g the zone, of liv
ing on the knife’s edge between order and disorder, of—as painter
Fritz Scholder once described it— “w alk in g the tightrope between
accident and d iscip lin e.”
The second tactic that sm art organizations use to increase their
flow-friendliness and th eir em ployees’ opportunities for m astery is to
trig g e r the positive side of the Saw yer Effect. R ecall from Chapter 2
that extrinsic rewards can turn p lay into work. B ut it's also possible
to run the current in the other direction— and turn work into play.
Some tasks at work don’t auto m atically provide surges of flow, yet
still need to get done. So the shrewdest enterprises afford em ploy
ees the freedom to sculpt their jobs in ways that bring a little b it
of flow to otherwise m undane duties. A m y W rzesniew ski and Jan e
D utton, two business school professors, have studied this phenom
enon among hospital cleaners, nurses, and hairdressers. They found,
for instance, that some m em bers of the cleaning staff at hospitals,
instead of doing the m in im um the job required, took on new tasks—
from ch attin g w ith patients to helping m ake nurses’ jobs go more
smoothly. A dding these more absorbing challenges increased these
cleaners’ satisfaction and boosted their own views of their skills.
By refram ing aspects of their duties, they helped m ake work more
playful and more fully their own. “Even in low-autonom y jobs,”
W rzesniew ski and D utton w rite, “employees can create new dom ains
for m astery.”7
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T H E T H R E E LAWS OF M A S T E R Y
f low is essential to mastery. B ut flow doesn’t guarantee m astery—

S because the two concepts operate on different horizons of tim e.
One happens in a m om ent; the other unfolds over months, years,
som etim es decades. You and I each m ig h t reach flow tomorrow
m orning— but neither one of us w ill achieve m astery overnight.
So how can we en list flow in the quest for som ething that goes
deeper and endures longer? W h at can we do to move toward m as
tery, one of the key elem ents of Type I behavior, in our organizations
and our lives? A few behavioral scientists have offered some in itial
answers to those questions, and their findings suggest that m astery
abides by three, somewhat peculiar, laws.
Ma s te ry Is a M i n d s e t
As w ith so m any things in life, the pursuit of m astery is all in our

head. A t least th at’s w hat Carol Dweck has discovered.
Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford U niversity, has been
studyin g m otivation and achievem ent in children and young adults for
nearly forty years, am assing a body of rigorous em pirical research that
has made her a superstar in contemporary behavioral science. D weck’s
signature insight is that what people believe shapes what people
achieve. O ur beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our ab ilities—
w hat she calls our “self-theories”— determ ine how we interpret our
experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish.
A lthough her research looks m ostly at notions of “in telligen ce,” her
12 0
Mastery
findings apply w ith equal

force to most hum an capa “F ig u re o u t fo r y o u rs e lf w h a t yo u w a n t to
b ilities. And they yield the be re a lly g o o d a t, k n o w t h a t y o u ’ll n e ve r
first law of m astery: M astery re a lly s a tis fy y o u rs e lf th a t y o u 'v e m a d e it,
is a m indset. a n d a c c e p t th a t th a t's o ka y ."
According to Dweck, R O B E R T B. R E IC H
people can hold two differ Form er U.S. S ec re ta ry o f Labor
ent views of their own in tel

ligence. Those who have an
“en tity theory” believe that in telligen ce is just that— an entity. It
exists w ith in us, in a finite supply that we cannot increase. Those
who subscribe to an “increm ental theory” take a different view. They
believe that w h ile in telligen ce m ay vary slig h tly from person to per
son, it is u ltim ately som ething th at, w ith effort, we can increase. To
analogize to physical qualities, increm ental theorists consider in tel
ligence as som ething lik e strength. (W ant to get stronger and more
m uscular? Start pum ping iron.) E ntity theorists view it as som ething
more lik e h eight. (W ant to g et taller? You’re out of luck.)* If you
believe in telligen ce is a fixed quantity, then every educational and
professional encounter becomes a measure of how m uch you have. If
you believe in telligen ce is som ething you can increase, then the same
encounters become opportunities for grow th. In one view, in te lli
gence is som ething you dem onstrate; in the other, i t ’s som ething you
develop.
The two self-theories lead down two very different paths— one
that heads toward m astery and one that doesn’t. For instance, consider
goals. Dweck says they come in two varieties— performance goals
and learning goals. G etting an A in French class is a performance
*In h er 2 0 0 6 book. M in d set: T he N ew P sy ch o lo g y o f S uccess, w hich I recom m end in the Type 1

T o o lkit, D w eck refers со these tw o view s as th e "fixed m in d se t” and th e “g ro w th m in d set. “
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goal. B eing able to speak French is a learning goal. “Both goals are
en tirely normal and p retty much universal,” Dweck says, “and both
can fuel achievem ent.”8 B ut only one leads to mastery. In several
studies, Dweck found that g iv in g children a performance goal (say,
g e ttin g a high m ark on a test) was effective for relatively straigh t
forward problems but often inhibited children’s ab ility to apply the
concepts to new situations. For exam ple, in one study, Dweck and
a colleague asked junior high students to learn a set of scientific
principles, g iv in g h alf of the students a performance goal and h alf a
learning goal. After both groups dem onstrated they had grasped the
m aterial, researchers asked the students to apply th eir knowledge to
a new set of problem s, related but not identical to w hat th ey’d just
studied. Students w ith learning goals scored sign ifican tly higher on
these novel challenges. They also worked longer and tried more solu
tions. As Dweck w rites, “W ith a learning goal, students don’t have
to feel that th ey’re already good at som ething in order to hang in
and keep tryin g. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove th ey’re
sm art.”9
Indeed, the two self-theories take very different views of effort. To
increm ental theorists, exertion is positive. Since increm ental theo
rists believe that a b ility is m alleable, they see w orking harder as a
w ay to g et better. By contrast, says D weck, “the en tity theory . . .
is a system that requires a diet of easy successes.” In this schema,
if you have to work hard, it means you’re not very good. People
therefore choose easy targets that, when h it, affirm their existing
ab ilities but do little to expand them. In a sense, en tity theorists
w ant to look like masters w ithout expending the effort to attain
mastery.
Finally, the two types of th inkin g trig g e r contrasting responses
to adversity— one that Dweck calls “helpless,” the other, “m astery-
oriented.’’ In a study of Am erican fifth- and sixth-graders, Dweck
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Mastery
gave students eig h t conceptual problem s they could solve, followed

by four they could not (because the questions were too advanced for
children that age). Students who subscribed to the idea that brain
power is fixed gave up q u ickly on the tough problem s and blam ed
th eir (lack of) in telligen ce for th eir difficulties. Students w ith a
more expansive m indset kept w orking in spite of the difficulty and
deployed far more inventive strategies to find a solution. W h at did
these students blam e for their in ab ility to conquer the toughest prob
lem s? “The answer, w hich surprised us, was that they d id n ’t blam e
an yth in g ,” Dweck says. The young people recognized that setbacks
were inevitable on the road to m astery and that they could even be
guideposts for the journey.
D w eck’s in sights map nicely to the behavioral distinctions under
lyin g M otivation 2.0 and M otivation 3.0. Type X behavior often
holds an en tity theory of in telligen ce, prefers performance goals
to learning goals, and disdains effort as a sign of weakness. Type
I behavior has an increm ental theory of intelligen ce, prizes learn
in g goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way
to im prove at som ething that m atters. B egin w ith one m indset,
and m astery is im possible. B egin w ith the other, and it can be
inevitable.
M a ste ry Is a Pain
Each sum mer, about tw elve hundred young Am erican men and
women arrive at the U nited States M ilitary A cadem y at W est Point
to begin four years of study and to take their place in the fabled
“long gray lin e .” But before any of them sees a classroom, they go
through seven weeks of Cadet Basic T raining— otherwise known
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as “Beast B arracks.” B y the

"T ry to p ic k a p ro fe s s io n in w h ic h yo u e n jo y t jme the sum m er ends, one
e ven th e m o s t m u n d a n e , te d io u s p a rts . ]n tw enty of these talented,
Then yo u w ill a lw a y s be h a p p y ." dedicated young adults has
WILLSHORTZ dropped out. A group of
P uzzle guru scholars— two from W est
Point, another from the U n i
versity of Pennsylvania, and
a fourth from the U niversity of M ichigan— w anted to understand
w hy some students continued on the road toward m ilitary m astery
and others got off at the first exit.
W as it physical strength and athleticism ? Intellect? Leadership
ab ility ? W ell-roundedness?
None of the above. The best predictor of success, the researchers
found, was the prospective cadets’ ratings on a noncognitive, non
physical trait known as “g r it”— defined as “perseverance and passion for
long-term goals.”10 The experience of these arm y officers-in-training
confirms the second law of mastery: M astery is a p a in .
As wonderful as flow is, the path to m astery— becoming ever
better at som ething you care about— is not lined w ith daisies and
spanned by a rainbow. If it were, more of us w ould m ake the trip.
M astery hurts. Som etim es— m any tim es— i t ’s not m uch fun. That
is one lesson of the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson, whose
groundbreaking research on expert performance has provided a new
theory of w hat fosters mastery. As he puts it, “M any characteris
tics once believed to reflect innate talent are actu ally the results of
intense practice for a m inim um of 10 years.”11 M astery— of sports,
m usic, business— requires effort (difficult, painful, excruciating,
all-consum ing effort) over a long tim e (not a week or a month, but
a decade).12 Sociologist D aniel Cham bliss has referred to this as “the
12 4
Mastery
m undanity of excellence.” Like Ericsson, Cham bliss found— in a

three-year study of O lym pic sw im m ers— that those who did the best
typ ically spent the most tim e and effort on the m undane activities
that readied them for races.13 I t’s the same reason that, in another
study, the W est Point g rit researchers found that g rittin ess— rather
than IQ or standardized test scores— is the most accurate predictor of
college grades. As they explained, “W hereas the im portance of work
ing harder is easily apprehended, the im portance of w orking longer
w ithout sw itching objectives m ay be less perceptible . . . in every
field, g rit m ay be as essential as talent to high accom plishm ent.”14
Flow enters the picture here in two ways. If people are conscious
of w hat puts them in flow, th ey’ll have a clearer idea of w hat they
should devote the tim e and dedication to master. A nd those moments
of flow in the course of pursuin g excellence can help people through
the rough parts. B ut in the end, m astery often involves w orking
and w orking and showing little im provem ent, perhaps w ith a few
moments of flow p u llin g you along, then m aking a little progress,
and then w orking and w orking on that new, slig h tly higher plateau
again. It’s g ru elin g , to be sure. B ut th at’s not the problem ; th at’s the
solution.
As Carol Dweck says, “Effort is one of the things that gives m ean
in g to life. Effort means you care about som ething, that som ething is
im portant to you and you are w illin g to work for it. It w ould be an
im poverished existence if you were not w illin g to value things and
com m it yourself to w orking toward th em .”15
Another doctor, one who lacks a Ph.D. but has a plaque in the
B asketball H all of Fame in Springfield, M assachusetts, put it sim i
larly. “B eing a professional,” Ju liu s Erving once said, “is doing
the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel lik e doing
th em .”16
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M a s te ry Is an A s y m p t o te
To understand the final law of mastery, you need to know a little

algebra and a little art history.
From algebra, you m ig h t rem em ber the concept of an asym ptote.
If not, m aybe you’ll recognize it below. An asym ptote (in this case,
a horizontal asym ptote) is a straight lin e th at a curve approaches but
never qu ite reaches.
From art history, you m ight rem em ber Paul Cezanne, the
nineteenth-century French painter. You needn’t rem em ber m uch—
just that he was significant enough to have art critics and scholars
w rite about him . Cezanne’s most enduring p ain tin gs came late in his
life. And one reason for this, according to U niversity of Chicago econ
om ist D avid Galenson, w ho’s studied the careers of artists, is that he
was endlessly tryin g to realize his best work. For Cezanne, one critic
wrote,
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Mastery
the u ltim ate synthesis of a d esign was never revealed in a flash;

rather he approached it w ith infinite precautions, stalk in g it,
as it were, now from one point of view, now from another. . . .
F or him th e synthesis w as a n asym ptote to w a rd w h ich he w as f o r ever
a p proa ch in g w ith ou t ever q u ite rea ch in g it . 17
This is the nature of m astery: M astery is a n asym ptote.

You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can g et really,
really, really close to it. B ut lik e Cezanne, you can never touch it. M as
tery is im possible to realize fully. T iger Woods, perhaps the greatest
golfer of all tim e, has said flatly that he can— that he m ust— become
better. He said it when he was an am ateur. H e’ll say it after his best
outin g or at the end of his finest season. H e’s pursuing mastery.
T h at’s well-know n. W hat's less w ell-know n is that he understands
that he’ll never get it. It w ill alw ays hover beyond his grasp.
The m astery asym ptote is a source of frustration. W h y reach
for som ething you can never fu lly attain? B ut it ’s also a source of
allure. W h y not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the
realization. In the end, m astery attracts precisely because m astery
eludes.
T H E O XYG EN OF T H E S O U L
* he subjects were d isp layin g the w arning signs of “generalized

: anxiety disorder,” a m ental illness that afflicts roughly 3 percent
of the adult population. According to the D ia gn ostic a n d S ta tistica l
M a n u a l o f M en ta l D isorders (D SM -IV ), the presence of any three of the
follow ing six symptoms indicates what could be a serious problem :
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• Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge

• B eing easily fatigued
• D ifficulty concentrating or m ind going blank
• Irritab ility
• M uscle tension
• Sleep disturbance
These m en and women seemed textbook cases. One person, who

had previously glid ed through life w ith equanim ity, now felt “tense,
more hostile, angry, and irritated .” Another reported being “more
irritab le, restless,” and suffering from “shorter concentration.” Yet
another scribbled this self-description: “Slept badly, listless, more
nervous, more guard ed .” Some people feared they were having a ner
vous breakdown. One person’s m ind was so m uddied that he inad
vertently w alked into a w all and broke his glasses.
Tim e for a trip to the psychiatrist or a prescription for antianxiety
m edicine?
No. It was tim e for people to let flow back into their lives. In the
early 1970s, C sikszentm ihalyi conducted an experim ent in w hich he
asked people to record all the things they did in th eir lives that were
“noninstrum ental”— that is, sm all activities they undertook not out
of obligation or to achieve a particular objective, but because they
enjoyed them . Then he issued the follow ing set of instructions:
B egin n in g [m orning of target date], when you wake up and

u n til 9 :0 0 PM , we would lik e you to act in a norm al way,
doing all the things you have to do, but not doing anything
that is “p la y ” or “noninstrum ental.”
In other words, he and his research team directed participants

to scrub their lives of flow. People who liked aspects of their work
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Mastery
had to avoid situations that m ig h t trigg er enjoym ent. People who

relished dem anding physical exercise had to rem ain sedentary. One
woman enjoyed w ashing dishes because it gave her som ething con
structive to do, along w ith tim e to fantasize free of g u ilt, but could
wash dishes only when absolutely necessary.
The results were alm ost im m ediate. Even at the end of the first
day, participants “noticed an increased sluggishness about their
behavior.” They began com plaining of headaches. Most reported dif
ficulty concentrating, w ith “thoughts [th at] w ander round in circles
w ithout g e ttin g anyw here.” Some felt sleepy, w hile others were too
agitated to sleep. As C sikszentm ihalyi wrote, “A fter just two days of
deprivation . . . the general deterioration in mood was so advanced
th at prolonging the experim ent would have been unadvisable.”18
Two days. Forty-eight hours w ithout flow plunged people into a
state eerily sim ilar to a serious psychiatric disorder. The experim ent
suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagem ent that M otivation 3.0
calls for, isn ’t a nicety. I t’s a necessity. W e need it to survive. It is the
oxygen of the soul.
And one of C sikszen tm ih alyi’s more surprising findings is that
people are m uch more lik e ly to reach that flow state at work than in
leisure. W ork can often have the structure of other autotelic expe
riences: clear goals, im m ediate feedback, challenges w ell matched
to our ab ilities. And when it does, we don’t just enjoy it more, we
do it better. T h at’s w hy it ’s so odd that organizations tolerate work
environm ents that deprive large numbers of people of these experi
ences. B y offering a few more G oldilocks tasks, by looking for ways
to unleash the positive side of the Sawyer Effect, organizations can
help their own cause and enrich people’s lives.
C sikszentm ihalyi grasped this essential reality more than th irty
years ago, when he w rote, “There is no reason to believe any longer
th at only irrelevant ‘p la y ’ can be enjoyed, w hile the serious business
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of life m ust be borne as a burdensome cross. Once w e realize that the

boundaries between work and p lay are artificial, we can take m atters
in hand and begin the difficult task of m akin g life more liv ab le.”19
But if w e’re looking for guidance on how to do this rig h t— on
how to m ake m astery an ethic for liv in g — our best role models are
probably not sittin g around a boardroom table or w orking in the
office down the hall.
Over lunch, C sikszentm ihalyi and I talked about children. A little
k id ’s life bursts w ith autotelic experiences. C hildren careen from one
flow m om ent to another, anim ated by a sense of joy, equipped w ith
a m indset of possibility, and w orking w ith the dedication of a W est
Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw
feedback from the environm ent in an endless p ursuit of mastery.
Then— at some point in their lives— they don’t. W h at happens?
“You start to get ashamed that w hat you’re doing is ch ild ish ,”
C sikszentm ihalyi explained.
W h at a m istake. Perhaps you and I— and all the other adults
in charge of things— are the ones who are im m ature. It goes back
to C sikszentm ihalyi’s experience on the train, w ondering how
grow n-ups could have gotten things so w rong. O ur circum stances
m ay be less dire, but the observation is no less acute. Left to their
own devices, C sikszentm ihalyi says, children seek out flow w ith the
in ev itab ility of a natural law. So should we all.
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Purpose
e know from statisticians that dem ographics is destiny. And

W we know from the R o llin g Stones that you can’t alw ays get
w hat you w ant. W h at we don’t know is w hat happens when these
two indom itable principles sit down, pour them selves a d rin k, and
g et to know each other better.
B ut we re about to find out.
In 2006, the first m embers of the baby-boom generation began
tu rn in g sixty. On birthdays w ith b ig round num bers, people usually
stop, reflect, and take stock of th eir lives. And I’ve found that when
boomers, in the U nited States and elsewhere, reach this m ilestone,
they typ ically move through a three-stage reaction.
In the first stage, they ask: “H ow the heck did I g et to be six ty?”
W h en their odometer flips to 6-0, people often are surprised and
s lig h tly alarm ed. Sixty, they th in k , is old. They ta lly their regrets
DRIVE
and confront the reality that M ick Ja g g e r and crew were rig h t, that
they d id n ’t alw ays g et w hat they wanted.
B ut then the second stage kicks in. In the not-so-distant past,
turn in g sixty m eant that you were som ewhat, ahem , long in the
tooth. B ut at the b eginn ing of the tw enty-first century, anyone who’s
healthy enough to have made it six decades is probably healthy
enough to hang on a fair b it longer. According to U nited N ations
data, a sixty-year-old Am erican man can expect to live for another
tw enty-plus years; a sixty-year-old A m erican wom an w ill be around
for another quarter of a century. In Jap an , a sixty-year-old man
can expect to live past his eighty-second birthday, a sixty-year-old
woman to nearly eigh ty-eigh t. The pattern is the same in m any other
prosperous countries. In France, Israel, Italy, Sw itzerland, Canada,
and elsewhere, if you’ve reached the age of sixty, you’re more than
lik e ly to live into your e ig h ties.1 And this realization brings w ith it
a certain relief. “W h ew ,” the boomer in Toronto or O saka sighs. “I’ve
got a couple more decades.”
B ut the relief q u ickly dissipates— because alm ost as soon as the
sigh fades, people enter the third stage. Upon com prehending that
they could have another twenty-five years, sixty-year-old boomers
look back twenty-five years— to when they were thirty-five— and a
sudden thought clonks them on the side of the head. “Wow. T hat
sure happened fast,” they say. “W ill the next tw enty-five years race
by lik e that? If so, when am I going to do som ething that m atters?
W hen am I goin g to live m y best life? W h en am I goin g to m ake a
difference in the w orld?”
Those questions, which sw irl through conversations takin g place
at boomer kitchen tables around the w orld, m ay sound touchy-feely.
B ut th ey’re now occurring at a rate that is unprecedented in hum an
civilization. Consider: Boomers are the largest dem ographic cohort
in most western countries, as w ell as in places lik e Jap an , A ustralia,
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Purpose
and N ew Zealand. According to the U .S. Census Bureau, the U nited

States alone has about 78 m illio n boomers— w hich means that,
on average, each year more than four m illio n Am ericans h it this
soul-searching, life-pondering birthday.2 T h at’s more than 11,000
people each day, more than 4 5 0 every hour.
In other w ords, in A m erica alone, one h u n d red boomers tu rn six ty every
thirteen m inutes.
Every thirteen m inutes another hundred people— m em bers of the
w ealthiest and best-educated generation the world has ever known—
begin reckoning w ith their m o rtality and asking deep questions
about m eaning, significance, and w hat they tru ly want.
One hundred people. Every thirteen m inutes. Every hour. Of
every day. U n til 2024.
W h en the cold front of dem ographics meets the warm front of
unrealized dream s, the result w ill be a thunderstorm of purpose the
likes of which the world has never seen.
THE PURPOSE MOTIVE
~F he first two legs of the Type I tripod, autonom y and mastery, are
1 essential. B ut for proper balance we need a third leg— purpose,
w hich provides a context for its two m ates. Autonomous people
w orking toward m astery perform at very high levels. B ut those who
do so in the service of some greater objective can achieve even more.
The most deeply m otivated people— not to m ention those who are
m ost productive and satisfied— hitch their desires to a cause larger
than themselves.
M otivation 2.0, however, doesn’t recognize purpose as a m otiva
tor. The Type X operating system doesn’t banish the concept, but it
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relegates it to the status of

"/ b e lie ve w h o le h e a rte d ly th a t a n e w ornam ent— a nice accessory
fo rm o f c a p ita lis m is e m e rg in g . M o re if you w ant it, so long as it
s ta k e h o ld e rs (c u s to m e rs , e m p lo ye e s, doesn’t g e t in the w ay of the
s h a re h o ld e rs , a n d th e la rg e r c o m m u n ity ) im portant stuff. Yet by tak
w a n t th e ir bu sine sse s t o . . . h a ve a in g this view, M otivation
p u rp o s e b ig g e r th a n th e ir p r o d u c t " 2.0
M ATS LEDERHAUSEN of who we are. From the
In v e s to r and fo rm e r m om ent th at hum an beings
M c D o n a ld 's executive
first stared into the sky, con
tem plated th eir place in the
universe, and tried to create
som ething that bettered the world and outlasted th eir lives, we have
been purpose seekers. “Purpose provides activation energy for liv
in g ,” psychologist M ih aly C sikszentm ihalyi told me in an interview.
“I th ink that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a
sense of doing som ething beyond them selves.”
M otivation 3.0 seeks to reclaim this aspect of the hum an condi
tion. Baby boomers around the world— because of the stage of their
lives and the size of their numbers— are n udging purpose closer to
the cultural center. In response, business has begun to rethink how
purpose figures in w hat it does. “As an em otional catalyst, w ealth
m axim ization lacks the power to fully m obilize hum an energies,”
says strategy gu ru (and boomer) Gary H am el.3 Those staggerin g lev
els of worker disengagem ent I described in the previous chapter have
a companion trend that companies are only startin g to recognize: an
equally sharp rise in volunteerism , especially in the U nited States.
These diverging lines— compensated engagem ent goin g down,
uncom pensated effort going up— suggest that volunteer work is
nourishing people in ways that paid work sim ply is not.
W e’re learning that the profit motive, potent though it is, can be
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Purpose
an insufficient im petus for

both individuals and orga “In a c u rio u s way, a g e is s im p le r th a n
nizations. An equally pow y o u th , fo r i t h a s so m a n y fe w e r o p tio n s ."
erful source of energy, one S T A N L E Y K U N IT Z
w e’ve often neglected or dis Form er U.S. p o e t la u re a te
missed as unrealistic, is w hat

we m ig h t call the “purpose
m otive.” This is the final b ig distinction between the two operating
systems. M otivation 2.0 centered on profit m axim ization. M otivation
3.0 doesn’t reject profits, but it places equal emphasis on purpose
m axim ization. W e see the first stirrings of this new purpose m otive in
three realm s of organizational life— goals, words, and policies.
Goals
Boomers aren’t sin gin g alone in their chorus of purpose. Jo in in g

them , and using the same hym nbook, are their sons and daughters—
known as G eneration Y, the m illen n ials, or the echo boomers. These
young adults, who have recently begun entering the workforce them
selves, are shifting the center of gravity in organizations by their very
presence. As the w riter Sylvia H ew lett has found in her research, the
two bookend generations “are redefining success [an d] are w illin g to
accept a radically ‘rem ixed’ set of rewards.” N either generation rates
money as the most im portant form of compensation. Instead they
choose a range of nonmonetary factors— from “a great team ” to “the
ab ility to give back to society through w o rk.”4 And if they can’t find
that satisfying package of rewards in an existing organization, th ey’ll
create a venture of their own.
Take the case of Am erican Gen Y-er B lake M ycoskie and TOMS
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Shoes, the company he launched in 20 06 . TOMS doesn’t fit sn ugly

into the traditional business boxes. It offers hip, canvas, flat-soled
shoes. B ut every tim e TOMS sells a p air of shoes to you, m e, or
your next-door neighbor, it gives aw ay another pair of new shoes to
a child in a developing country. Is TOM S a charity that finances its
operation w ith shoe sales? Or is it a business that sacrifices its earn
ings in order to do good? I t’s neither— and i t ’s both. The answer is
so confusing, in fact, th at TOMS Shoes had to address the question
d irectly on its w ebsite, just below inform ation on how to return a
pair th at’s too b ig. TOM S, the site explains, is “a for-profit company
w ith g iv in g at its core.”
Got it? No? Okay, try this: The company’s “business model trans
forms our customers into benefactors.” Better? M aybe. W eirder?
Certainly. Ventures like TOMS blur, perhaps even shatter, the exist
ing categories. Their goals, and the way companies reach them , are
so incompatible to M otivation 2.0 that if TOMS had to rely on this
twentieth-century operating system, the whole endeavor would seize up
and crash in the entrepreneurial equivalent of a blue screen of death.
M otivation 3.0, by contrast, is expressly b u ilt for purpose m axi
m ization. In fact, the rise of purpose m axim izers is one reason we
need the new operating system in the first place. As I explained in
Chapter 1, operations lik e TOMS are on the vanguard of a broader
reth inkin g of how people organize w hat they do. “For benefit” orga
nizations, В corporations, and low-profit lim ite d -liab ility corpora
tions all recast the goals of the traditional business enterprise. And
a ll are becoming more prevalent as a new breed of businessperson
seeks purpose w ith the fervor that traditional economic theory says
entrepreneurs seek profit. Even cooperatives— an older business
m odel w ith motives other than profit m axim ization— are m oving
from the shaggy edge to the clean-cut center. According to w riter
M arjorie K elly, in the last three decades, worldw ide m em bership in
Г3 6
Pu r p o s e
co-ops has doubled to 8 0 0 m illio n people. In the U nited States alone,

more people belong to a co-op than own shares in the stock m arket.
And the idea is spreading. In Colom bia, K elly notes, “SaludCoop
provides health-care services to a quarter of the population. In Spain,
the M ondragon Corporacion Cooperativa is the nation’s seventh larg
est in d ustrial concern.”5
These “not only for profit” enterprises are a far cry from the
“socially responsible” businesses th at have been all the rage for the
last fifteen years but have rarely delivered on their prom ise. The aim s
of these M otivation 3.0 companies are not to chase profit w h ile tryin g
to stay ethical and law -ab id in g. T heir goal is to pursue purpose—
and to use profit as the catalyst rather than the objective.
Words
In the spring of 20 09 , as the w orld economy was reeling from a

once-in-a-generation crisis and the financial shenanigans that stoked
it, a few H arvard Business School students glanced in the m irror
and wondered if they were the problem . The people th ey’d aspired
to be— financiers and corporate dealm akers— w eren’t, it turned out,
heroes in an epic tale, but villain s in a darker story. M any of these
high-profile businesspeople were the ones who pushed the financial
system to the brink. M eanw hile, these young men and women looked
am ong their classmates and saw the seeds of sim ilar behavior. In one
survey of M BA students a few years earlier, a whopping 56 percent
adm itted to cheating regularly.6
So a handful of H arvard second-years, fearing that w hat was once
a badge of honor had become three scarlet letters, did what business
students are trained to do. They m ade a plan. Together they fashioned
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w hat they called “The M BA Oath"— a H ippocratic oath for business

grads in which they pledge their fealty to causes above and beyond
the bottom line. It’s not a legal docum ent. It’s a code of conduct.
A nd the conduct it recommends, as w ell as the very words it uses,
leans more toward purpose m axim ization than profit m axim ization.
From the first sentence, the oath rings w ith the sounds of M otiva
tion 3.0:
“As a m anager, m y purpose is to serve the greater good by b rin g
in g people and resources together to create value th at no single in d i
vidual can create alone,” it begins. And on it goes for nearly five
hundred words. “I w ill safeguard the interests of m y shareholders,
co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate,” the
oath-takers pledge. “I w ill strive to create sustainable economic,
social, and environm ental prosperity w orldw ide.”
These words— “purpose,” “greater good,” “sustainable”— don’t
come from the Type X dictionary. One rarely hears them in business
school— because, after all, th at’s not w hat business school is sup
posed to be about. Yet students at arguab ly the w o rld’s most power
ful M BA factory thought otherwise. And in just a few weeks, roughly
one-quarter of the grad uatin g class had taken the oath and signed the
pledge. In launching the effort, M ax Anderson, one of the student
founders, said: “M y hope is that at our 25th reunion our class w ill
not be known for how m uch money we m ade or how much money
we gave back to the school, but for how the world was a better place
as a result of our leadership.”7
W ords m atter. And if you listen carefully, you m ig h t begin to hear
a s lig h tly different— s lig h tly more purpose-oriented— dialect. Gary
H am el, whom I m entioned above, says, “The goals of m anagem ent
are usually described in words lik e ‘efficiency,’ ‘advantage,’ ‘value,’
‘superiority,’ ‘focus,’ and ‘differentiation.’ Im portant as these objec
tives are, they lack the power to rouse hum an h earts.” Business lead
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Purpose
ers, he says, “m ust find ways to infuse m undane business activities

w ith deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth , love, justice,
and beauty.”8 H um anize w hat people say and you m ay w ell hum an
ize w hat they do.
T h at’s the th in k in g behind the sim ple and effective w ay Robert
B. R eich, former U .S. labor secretary, gauges the health of an orga
nization. He calls it the “pronoun test.” W hen he visits a workplace,
he’ll ask the people em ployed there some questions about the com
pany. H e listens to the substance of their response, of course. B ut
m o s t o f all, he listens for the pronouns they use. Do the workers refer
to the com pany as “th ey”? Or do they describe it in term s of “w e”?
“T h ey” companies and “w e” com panies, he says, are very different
places.9 And in M otivation 3.0, “w e” wins.
Policies
Between the words businesses use and the goals they seek sit the
policies they im plem ent to turn the former into the latter. H ere, too,
one can detect the early tremors of a different approach. For exam
ple, m any companies in the last decade spent considerable tim e and
effort crafting corporate ethics guid elin es. Yet instances of unethical
behavior don’t seem to have declined. V aluable though those g u id e
lines can be, as a policy they can unin tentio n ally move purposeful
behavior out of the Type I schema and into Type X. As Harvard B usi
ness School professor M ax Bazerman has explained:
Say you take people who are m otivated to behave nicely, then
give them a fairly weak set of ethical standards to m eet. Now,
instead of asking them to “do it because it ’s the rig h t th ing
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to do,” you’ve essentially

“ The v a lu e o f a life ca n be m e a s u re d given them an alternate
b y o n e 's a b ilit y to a ffe c t th e d e s tin y set of standards— do this
o f o n e less a d v a n ta g e d . S in ce d e a th is so you can check off all
a n a b s o lu te c e r ta in ty f o r e veryone, th e these boxes.
im p o r ta n t v a ria b le is th e q u a lity o f life Im agine an organiza
o n e le a d s b e tw e e n th e tim e s o f b ir th tion, for exam ple, that
a n d d e a th ." believes in affirmative
B ILL S T R IC K L A N D action— one that wants
Founder o f th e M a n c h es te r to m ake the world a bet
C raftsm en 's G u ild , a nd M a c A rth u r
ter place by creating a
"genius aw ard" w in n e r
more diverse workforce.
B y reducing ethics to
a checklist, suddenly affirmative action is just a bunch of
requirem ents that the organization m ust m eet to show that it
isn ’t discrim in atin g.
Now the organization isn’t focused on affirm atively pursu
in g diversity but rather on m aking sure that all the boxes are
checked off to show that w hat it did is OK (and so it won’t get
sued). Before, its workers had an intrinsic m otivation to do
the rig h t th in g, but now they have an extrinsic m otivation to
m ake sure that the company doesn’t g e t sued or fined.10
In other words, people m ig h t m eet the m in im al ethical standards to

avoid punishm ent, but the guidelines have done nothing to inject
purpose into the corporate bloodstream. The better approach could
be to en list the power of autonom y in the service of purpose m axim i
zation. Two in trig u in g examples dem onstrate w hat I mean.
First, m any psychologists and economists have found that the cor
relation between money and happiness is weak— th at past a certain
(and qu ite modest) level, a larger p ile of cash doesn’t brin g people
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Purpose
a h igh er level of satisfaction. B ut a few social scientists have begun

adding a b it more nuance to this observation. A ccording to Lara
A knin and Elizabeth D unn, sociologists at the U niversity of B ritish
Colum bia, and M ichael Norton, a psychologist at the H arvard B usi
ness School, h ow people spend th eir money m ayb e at least as im por
tant as how m uch money they earn. In particular, spending money
on other people (buying flowers for your spouse rather than an M P3
player for yourself) or on a cause (donating to a religious in stitutio n
rather than goin g for an expensive haircut) can actu ally increase our
subjective w ell-b ein g.11 In fact, Dunn and N orton propose turn in g
their findings on w hat they call “pro-social” spending into corporate
policy. According to T he B oston G lobe, they believe that “companies
can improve their em ployees’ em otional w ell-bein g by sh ifting some
of th eir budget for charitable g iv in g so that in d ivid ual em ployees are
given sums to donate, leaving them happier even as the charities of
their choice benefit.”12 In other words, handing individual em ploy
ees control over how the organization gives back to the com m unity
m ig h t do more to im prove their overall satisfaction than one more
“if-th en ” financial incentive.
Another study offers a second possible purpose-centered policy
prescription. Physicians in high-profile settings lik e the Mayo C linic
face pressures and dem ands that can often lead to burnout. B ut field
research at the prestigious m edical facility found that le ttin g doc
tors spend one day a week on the aspect of their job that was most
m eaningful to them — w hether patient care, research, or com m unity
service— could reduce the physical and em otional exhaustion that
accompanies their work. Doctors who participated in this trial policy
had h alf the burnout rate of those who did n ot.13 T hink of it as “20
percent tim e” w ith a purpose.
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T H E GOOD L I F E
Each year about thirteen hundred seniors graduate from the U niver
sity of Rochester and begin their journey into w hat m any of their
parents and professors lik e to call the real world. Edward Deci, R ich
ard R yan, and their colleague Christopher N iem iec decided to ask
a sam ple of these soon-to-be graduates about their life goals— and
then to follow up w ith them early in th eir careers to see how they
were doing. W h ile m uch social science research is done w ith student
volunteers, scientists rarely track students after they've packed up
their diplom as and exited the campus gates. And these researchers
wanted to study the post-college tim e frame because it represents a
“critical developm ent period that m arks people’s transitions to their
adult identities and liv es.”14
Some of the U of R students had w hat Deci, R yan, and N iem iec
label “extrinsic aspirations”— for instance, to become wealthy or to
achieve fame— what we m igh t call “profit goals.” Others had “in trin
sic aspirations”— to help others improve their lives, to learn, and to
grow— or what we m igh t think of as “purpose go als.” After these
students had been out in the real world for between one and two years,
the researchers tracked them down to see how they were faring.
The people w ho’d had purpose goals and felt they were attain in g
them reported higher levels of satisfaction and subjective w ell-being
than when they were in college, and qu ite low levels of anxiety and
depression. T h at’s probably no surprise. T hey’d set a personally
m eaningful goal and felt they were reaching it. In that situation,
most of us would lik ely feel p retty good, too.
B ut the results for people w ith profit goals were more com pli
cated. Those who said they were attain in g their goals— accum ulating
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Purpose
wealth, w inning acclaim—

reported levels of satisfaction, "One c a n n o t le a d a life t h a t is t r u ly
self-esteem, and positive affect e x c e lle n t w it h o u t fe e lin g th a t o n e b e lo n g s
no higher than when they to s o m e th in g g re a te r a n d m o re p e rm a n e n t
were students. In other words, th a n o n e s e lf."
they’d reached their goals, M IH A L Y C S IK S Z EN T M IH A L Y I
but it didn’t make them any

happier. W h at’s more, gradu
ates w ith profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other
negative indicators— again, even though they were attaining their
goals.
“These findings are rather strik in g ,” the researchers w rite, “as
they suggest that attain m en t of a particular set of goals [in this case,
profit goals] has no im pact on w ell-bein g and actually contributes to
ill-b e in g .”15
W h en I discussed these results w ith Deci and R yan, they were
especially em phatic about their significance— because the findings
suggest that even when we do get w hat we w ant, i t ’s not alw ays w hat
we need. “People who are very h igh in extrinsic goals for w ealth are
more lik ely to attain that w ealth, but th ey’re s till unhappy,” Ryan
told me.
O r as Deci put it, “The typical notion is this: You value some
th ing. You attain it. Then you’re better off as a function of it. B ut
w hat we find is that there are certain things that if you value and if
you attain them , you’re w orse off as a result of it, not better off.”
F ailin g to understand this conundrum — that satisfaction depends
not m erely on having goals, but on having the r ig h t goals— can lead
sensible people down self-destructive paths. If people chase profit
goals, reach those goals, and s till don’t feel any better about their
lives, one response is to increase the size and scope of the goals— to
seek more money or greater outside validation. And that can “drive
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them down a road of further unhappiness th in k in g it ’s the road to

happiness,” Ryan said.
“One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attain-
ers is th at th ey’re not having good relationships. T hey’re busy m ak
in g money and atten din g to themselves and th at means that there’s
less room in their lives for love and attention and caring and em pa
thy and the things th at tru ly count,” Ryan added.
And if the broad contours of these findings are true for in d iv id u
als, w hy shouldn’t they also be true for organizations— which, of
course, are collections of individuals? I don’t m ean to say that profit
doesn’t m atter. It does. The profit m otive has been an im portant
fuel for achievem ent. B ut it ’s not the only m otive. And i t ’s not the
most im portant one. Indeed, if we were to look at history's greatest
achievem ents— from the p rin tin g press to constitutional democracy
to cures for deadly diseases— the spark that kept the creators work
in g deep into the n ig h t was purpose at least as m uch as profit. A
healthy society— and healthy business organizations— begins w ith
purpose and considers profit a way to move toward that end or a
happy by-product of its attainm ent.
And here the boomers— m aybe, just m aybe— can take the lead.
On the subjects of autonom y and mastery, adults should look to the
eloquent exam ple of children. B ut perhaps purpose is another m at
ter. B eing able to contem plate the b ig picture, to ponder one’s own
m ortality, to understand the paradox th at attain in g certain goals isn ’t
the answer seem to require having spent a few years on the planet.
And since the planet very soon w ill contain more people over age
sixty-five than under age five for the first tim e in its existence, the
tim in g couldn’t be better.
It’s in our nature to seek purpose. But th at nature is now
being revealed and expressed on a scale that is dem ographically
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Pu r p o s e
unprecedented and, u n til recently, scarcely im aginable. The conse

quences could rejuvenate our businesses and rem ake our world.
A c e n t r a l id e a of this book has been the m ism atch between

w hat science knows and w hat business does. The gap is w ide. Its
existence is alarm ing. And though closing it seems daun tin g, we
have reasons to be optim istic.
The scientists who study hum an m otivation, several of whom w e’ve
encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account
of both hum an performance and the hum an condition. The truths
th ey’ve revealed are sim ple, yet powerful. The science shows that
those typical tw entieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators— things
we consider somehow a “n atural” part of hum an enterprise— can
sometimes work. But th ey’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow
band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards— the
m ainstays of the M otivation 2.0 operating system — not only are inef
fective in m any situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative,
conceptual ab ilities that are central to current and future economic
and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high perfor
mance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishm ent drive,
but our third drive— our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to
extend and expand our ab ilities, and to live a life of purpose.
B rin gin g our businesses in s y n c w ith these truths w on’t be easy.
U nlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder.
And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the m otiva
tion gap anytim e soon, if it w eren’t for this: The science confirms
w hat we already know in our hearts.
W e know that hum an beings are not m erely smaller, slower, better
sm ellin g horses gallo p in g after that d ay’s carrot. W e know— if w e’ve
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DRIVE
spent tim e w ith young children or rem em ber ourselves at our best—
that w e’re not destined to be passive and com pliant. W e’re designed
to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences
in our lives aren’t when w e’re clam oring for validation from others,
but when w e’re listen in g to our own voice— doing som ething that
m atters, doing it w ell, and doing it in the service of a cause larger
than ourselves.
So, in the end, repairing the m ism atch and b rin gin g our under
standing of m otivation into the tw enty-first century is more than an
essential move for business. It’s an affirmation of our hum anity.
/46
Part Three
The Type I Toolkit

Welcome to the Type I Toolkit.
This is your guide to taking the ideas in this book and
p u ttin g them into action.
W hether you're looking fo r a be tte r w ay to run your
organization, navigate your career, or help your kids, there's
a tip, a best practice, or a recom mended book for you. A nd i f
ever you need a guick sum m ary o f Drive, or you w a n t to look
up one o f its terms, you can find th a t here, too.
You d on't have to read this section in any p a rtic u lar order.
Pick an entry th a t interests you and dive rig h t in. Like any
good toolkit, this one is versatile enough for you to return to
again and again.
W H A T ’ S IN T H I S T O O L K I T
Type I for I ndi vi dual s: N i ne St ra t egi e s for Aw a k e n i n g

Your Mot ivat ion
Type I for Or ganizat ions: N i n e Ways to I mpr ove Your

Company, Of f ic e, or Group
T he Zen of Co mp e n s a t i o n : Payi ng People t he

Type I Way
Type I for Parent s and Educators: Ni n e Ideas

for H e l p i n g Our Kids
The Type I R e a di ng List: Fi ft ee n Essential Books
Listen to t h e Gurus: Six Busi ness T hi n k e r s W ho Get It
T he Type I Fitness Plan: Four Tips for G e t t i n g (and

S tay ing) M ot iv at e d to Exercise
D riv e : The Re cap

I
i
DRIVE
Drive-. T h e Glossary
T h e D riv e Discussion Gui de: Twent y Conversation

St ar te rs to Keep You T h i n k i n g and Ta lking
Find Out M or e— A b o ut Yourself and Thi s Topic
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Type I f o r I n d i v i d u a l s :
N ine S t r a t e g i e s f o r A w a k e n i n g
Yo u r M o t i v a t i o n
Type Vs a re made, not born. A lthough th e w o r ld is a w a sh in ex trinsic

m otivators, th ere’s a lot w e can do to b rin g more autonom y, m astery,
a n d purpose into our work a n d life. H ere a re nine exercises to g e t you
on th e righ t track.
GI VE Y O U R S E L F A “ F L O W T E S T "
j\ j\ ih aly C sikszentm ihalyi did more than discover the concept

i V of “flow.” He also introduced an ingenious new technique to
measure it. C sikszentm ihalyi and his U niversity of Chicago team
equipped participants in their research studies w ith electronic p ag
ers. Then they paged people at random intervals (approxim ately eigh t
tim es a day) for a w eek, asking them to describe th eir m ental state
at that m om ent. Compared w ith previous methods, these real-tim e
reports proved far more honest and revealing.
DRIVE
You can use C sikszentm ihalyi’s m ethodological innovation in your

own quest for m astery by giv in g yourself a “flow te st.” Set a rem inder
on your com puter or m obile phone to go off at forty random tim es in
a week. Each tim e your device beeps, w rite down w hat you’re doing,
how you’re feeling, and whether you’re in “flow.” Record your obser
vations, look at the patterns, and consider the follow ing questions:
• W hich moments produced feelings of “flow”? W here were

you? W h at were you working on? W ho were you with?
• Are certain tim es of day more flow-friendly than oth
ers? How could you restructure your day based on your
findings?
• How m igh t you increase the num ber of optim al experi
ences and reduce the m oments when you felt disengaged
or distracted?
• If you’re having doubts about your job or career, w hat
does this exercise tell you about your true source of
intrinsic m otivation?
FI RST, A S K A BI G Q U E S T I O N . . .
3 n 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the
I U .S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy.
“A great m an,” she told him , “is one sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s
sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Frank
lin Roosevelt’s was: “H e lifted us out of a great depression and helped
us w in a world w ar.” Luce feared that K ennedy’s attention was so
splintered among different priorities th at his sentence risked becom
in g a m uddled paragraph.
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Type I for Individuals
You don’t have to be a president— of the U nited States or of your

local garden in g club— to learn from this tale. One w ay to orient your
life toward greater purpose is to th in k about your sentence. M aybe
i t ’s: “H e raised four kids who became happy and healthy ad u lts.” Or
“She invented a device th at m ade people’s lives easier.” Or “H e cared
for every person who w alked into his office regardless of w hether that
person could pay.” Or “She taugh t two generations of children how
to read.”
As you contem plate your purpose, begin w ith the big question:
W hat’s y o u r sentence?
. . . THE N KEEP A S KIN G

A SMALL QUESTION
~|~he b ig question is necessary, but not sufficient. T h at’s where

I the sm all question comes in. R eal achievem ent doesn’t happen
overnight. As anyone w ho’s trained for a m arathon, learned a new
language, or run a successful division can attest, you spend a lot
more tim e g rin d in g through tough tasks than you do basking in
applause.
H ere’s som ething you can do to keep yourself m otivated. A t the
end of each day, ask yourself w hether you were better today than you
were yesterday. D id you do more? D id you do it w ell? Or to g et spe
cific, did you learn your ten vocabulary words, m ake your eigh t sales
calls, eat your five servings of fruits and vegetables, w rite your four
pages? You don’t have to be flawless each day. Instead, look for sm all
measures of im provem ent such as how long you practiced your saxo
phone or w hether you held off on checking e-m ail u n til you finished
that report you needed to w rite. R em inding yourself that you don’t
15 5
DRIVE
need to be a m aster by day 3 is the best w ay of ensuring you w ill be

one by day 3,000.
So before you go to sleep each n ig h t, ask yourself the sm all ques
tion: Was I better toda y th a n yesterd a y?
TAKE A SAGMEISTER
he designer Stefan Sagm eister has found a b rillian t w ay to ensure

T he’s liv in g a Type I life. T hink about the standard pattern in devel
oped countries, he says. People usually spend the first twenty-five or
so years of their lives learning, the next forty or so years w orking,
and the final tw enty-five in retirem ent. T hat boilerplate tim elin e got
Sagm eister w ondering: W h y not snip five years from retirem ent and
sprinkle them into your w orking years?
So every seven years, Sagm eister closes his graphic design shop,
tells his clients he won’t be back for a year, and goes off on a 365-day
sabbatical. He uses the tim e to travel, to live places he’s never been,
and to experim ent w ith new projects. It sounds risky, I know. But
he says the ideas he generates durin g the year “o ff” often provide
his income for the next seven years. “T aking a Sagm eister,” as I now
call it, requires a fair b it of planning and saving, of course. But
doesn’t forgoing that big-screen TV seem a sm all price to pay for
an unforgettable— and un-get-backable— year of personal explora
tion? The truth is, this idea is more realistic than m any of us realize.
W h ich is w hy I hope to take a Sagm eister in a couple of years and
w hy you should consider it, too.
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G I VE Y O U R S E L F A P E R F O R M A N C E R E V I E W
erformance reviews, those annual or biannual rituals of organiza-

I tional life, are about as enjoyable as a toothache and as productive
as a train wreck. Nobody likes them — not the giver, not the receiver.
They don’t really help us achieve m astery— since the feedback often
comes six months after the work is com plete. (Im agine Serena W il
liam s or Twyla Tharp seeing th eir results or reading reviews only
tw ice a year.) And yet m anagers keep on h auling em ployees into
their offices for those aw kw ard, painful encounters.
M aybe there’s a better way. M aybe, as D ouglas M cG regor and
others have suggested, we should give ourselves our own perfor
mance reviews. H ere’s how. Figure out your goals— m ostly learning
goals, but also a few performance goals— and then every m onth, call
yourself to your office and give yourself an appraisal. How are you
faring? W here are you fallin g short? W h at tools, inform ation, or
support m ig h t you need to do better?
Some other hints:
• Set both sm aller and larger goals so that when it comes

tim e to evaluate yourself you’ve already accom plished
some whole tasks.
• M ake sure you understand how every aspect of your
work relates to your larger purpose.
• Be b ru tally honest. This exercise is aim ed at helping you
improve performance and achieve m astery— so if you
rationalize failures or gloss over your m istakes instead of
learning from them , you’re w asting your tim e.
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A nd if doing this solo isn’t your th in g , gath er a sm all group of

colleagues for regular peer-based do-it-yourself performance reviews.
If your comrades really care, th ey’ll te ll you the truth and hold you
accountable. One last question for bosses: W h y in God’s nam e are
you not encouraging all your employees to do this?
GE T U N S T U C K BY G O I N G O B L I Q U E
!Г“ ven the most in trin sically m otivated person sometim es gets stuck.
t_ So here’s a sim ple, easy, and fun w ay to power out of your m en
tal morass. In 1975, producer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schm idt
published a set of one hundred cards containing strategies that helped
them overcome the pressure-packed m om ents that alw ays accompany
a deadline. Each card contains a sin gle, often inscrutable, question
or statem ent to push you out of a m ental rut. (Some examples: W hat
w o u ld y o u r closest fr ie n d d o ? Your m istake w a s a h id d en intention. W hat
is the sim plest solu tion ? R epetition is a fo rm o f change. D on’t a v o id w h a t is
easy.) If you’re w orking on a project and find yourself stym ied, pull
an O blique card from the deck. These brain bombs are a great way
to keep your m ind open despite constraints you can’t control. You
can buy the deck at www.enoshop.co.uk/ or follow one of the T w it
ter accounts inspired by the strategies, such as: http://twitter.com/
oblique_chirps.
MO V E FI VE S T E P S C L O S E R TO M A S T E R Y
f \ ne key to m astery is what Florida State U niversity psychology

I
V / professor Anders Ericsson calls “deliberate practice”— a “lifelong
period o f . . . effort to improve performance in a specific dom ain.”
15 8
D eliberate practice isn ’t running a few m iles each day or banging

on the piano for tw enty m inutes each m orning. It’s m uch more pur
poseful, focused, and, yes, painful. Follow these steps— over and over
again for a decade— and you just m ig h t become a m aster:
• R em em b e r th at d e lib e ra te p rac tic e has o ne o b jective:

to im p ro ve p erfo rm an ce. “People who play tennis once
a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same
thing each tim e,” Ericsson has said. “Deliberate practice
is about changing your performance, setting new goals
and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each tim e.”
• R e p e a t, re p e a t, rep eat. R epetition m atters. B asketball
greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team
practice; they shoot five hundred.
• S eek c o n stan t, c r itic a l fee d b ac k . If you don’t know
how you’re doing, you w on’t know w hat to improve.
• F ocus r u th le s s ly o n w h e re y o u n eed h elp . W h ile m any
of us work on w hat w e’re already good at, says Ericsson,
“those who get better w ork on their weaknesses.”
• P re p a re for th e p ro ce ss to be m e n ta lly a n d p h y s i
c a lly e x h a u stin g . T h at’s w hy so few people com m it to
it, but th at’s w hy it works.
T A K E A PAGE F R O M W E B B E R A N D
A CARD FROM YOUR POCKET
n his in sightful book R ules o f T hum b, F ast C om pany m agazine

Icofounder A lan W ebber offers a sm art and sim ple exercise for
assessing whether you’re on the path to autonomy, mastery, and
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purpose. Get a few blank three-by-five-inch cards. On one of the

cards, w rite your answer to this question: “W h at gets you up
in the m o rn in g?” Now, on the other side of the card, w rite your
answer to another question: “W h at keeps you up at n ig h t?” Pare
each response to a sin gle sentence. And if you don’t lik e an answer,
toss the card and try again un til you’ve crafted som ething you can
live w ith. Then read w hat you’ve produced. If both answers give
you a sense of m eaning and direction, “C ongratulations!” says
Webber. “Use them as your compass, checking from tim e to tim e
to see if th ey’re s till true. If you don’t like one or both of your
answers, it opens up a new question: W h at are you going to do
about it ? ”
C R E A T E Y O U R O WN
M O T I V A T I O N A L P OST ER
Office posters that try to “m otivate” us have a g rim reputation. As

one w ag p ut it, “For the last two decades, m otivational posters have
inflicted unim aginable suffering on the workplaces of the w o rld .”
B ut who knows? Perhaps the first one was a th in g of beauty. M aybe
those cave draw ings in Lascaux, France, were some Paleolithic m o ti
vational speaker’s way of saying, “If you know where you're going,
you’ll never take a wrong tu rn .” Now you’ve got a chance to fight
back (or perhaps to reclaim that ancient legacy). Thanks to a num ber
of w ebsites, you can create your own m otivational posters— and you
no longer have to settle for photos of kittens clim b in g out of baskets.
You can be as serious or s illy w ith this exercise as you like. M otiva
tion is deeply personal and only you know what words or im ages w ill
resonate w ith you.
16 0
Try any of these sites:
B ig H uge Labs (http:llbigbugelabs.com / m otim tor.php)

A utom otivator (h ttp :llw ig fl ip.com lautom otivatorl)
To offer you some, er, m otivation, here are two posters I created
m yself:
Type I f o r O r g a n i z a t i o n s :
Ni ne Ways t o I m p r o v e Y o u r C o m pa n y,
Of fi ce , or G r o u p
W hether y o u ’re the CEO or the n ew intern, y o u can h elp create en ga g

ing, p rod u ctive w ork places th a t fo ster Type 1 behavior. H ere are nine
w a ys to begin p u llin g y o u r organization out o f the p a s t a n d into the
b righ ter w o rld o f M otivation 3-0.
TRY “ 2 0 P E R C E N T T I M E ”
WITH TRAINING WHEELS
\ / o u ’ve read about the wonders of “20 percent tim e ”— where orga-
s nizations encourage em ployees to spend one-fifth of their hours
w orking on any project they w ant. And if you’ve ever used G m ail
or read Google N ews, you’ve benefited from the results. But for all
the virtues of this Type I innovation, p u ttin g such a policy in place
can seem daun tin g. How much w ill it cost? W h at if it doesn’t work?
If you’re feeling skittish , here’s an idea: Go w ith a more modest
version— 20 percent tim e . . . w ith train in g wheels. Start w ith , say,
Type I for Organizations
10 percent time. T hat’s just one afternoon of a five-day workweek. (W ho

among us hasn’t wasted that am ount of tim e at work anyway?) And
instead of com m itting to it forever, try it for six months. By creating
this island of autonomy, you’ll help people act on their great ideas and
convert their downtime into more productive tim e. And who knows?
Someone in your operation just m ight invent the next Post-it note.
ENCOURAGE PEER-TO-PEER
“ NOW T H A T ” REWARDS
im ley-H orn and Associates, a c iv il engineering firm in R aleigh ,

K N orth Carolina, has established a reward system that gets the
Type I stam p of approval: A t any point, w ithout askin g perm ission,
anyone in the com pany can award a $50 bonus to any of her col
leagues. “It works because it ’s real-tim e, and it ’s not handed down
from any m anagem ent,” the firm ’s hum an resources director told F ast
C om pany. “A ny em ployee who does som ething exceptional receives
recognition from their peers w ith in m in utes.” Because these bonuses
are noncontingent “now th a t” rewards, they avoid the seven deadly
flaws of most corporate carrots. A nd because they come from a col
league, not a boss, they carry a different (and perhaps deeper) m ean
ing. You could even say th ey’re m otivating.
CO ND UC T AN A U T O N O M Y A U D IT
J . ow much autonom y do the people in your organization really

1 I have? If you’re lik e most folks, you probably don’t have a clue.
Nobody does. B ut there’s a way to find out— w ith an autonom y audit.
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A sk everyone in your departm ent or on your team to respond to these

four questions w ith a num erical ranking (using a scale of 0 to 10, w ith
0 m eaning “alm ost none” and 10 m eaning “a huge am ount”):
1. H ow m uch autonom y do you h a ve over y o u r tasks a t work—

y o u r m ain responsibilities a n d w h a t y o u do in a giv en d a y ?
2. H ow m uch autonom y do you ha ve over y o u r tim e a t work—
fo r instance, w h en y o u arrive, w h en y o u leave, a n d how you
a llo ca te yo u r hours each d a y?
3. H ow m uch autonom y do you h a ve over y o u r team a t work—
th a t is, to w h a t extent a re you able to choose the people ivith
w hom you ty p ica lly colla b ora te?
4- H ow m uch autonom y do you h a ve over yo u r technique a t
work— how you a ctu a lly perform th e m ain responsibilities o f
y o u r jo b ?
M ake sure a ll responses are anonymous. Then tabulate the results.

W h a t’s the employee average? The figure w ill fall somewhere on a
40-p o in t autonom y scale (w ith 0 being a N orth Korean prison and
4 0 being Woodstock). Compare that num ber to people’s perceptions.
Perhaps the boss thought everyone had p len ty of freedom— but the
au d it showed an average autonom y rating of only 15. Also calculate
separate results for task, tim e, team , and technique. A healthy overall
average can sometim es m ask a problem in a particular area. An over
all autonom y ratin g of, say, 27 isn ’t bad. However, if that average
consists of 8 each for task, technique, and team , but only 3 for tim e,
yo u’ve identified an autonom y weak spot in the organization.
I t’s rem arkable sometim es how little the people running organi
zations know about the experiences of the people w orking around
them . B ut i t ’s equally rem arkable how often leaders are w illin g to
do things differently if they see real data. T h at’s w hat an autonom y
16 4
audit can do. And if you include a section in your aud it for employees
to jot down their own ideas about increasing autonomy, you m igh t
even find some great solutions.
TAKE TH REE STEPS TOWARD

G I V I N G UP C O N T R O L
ype X bosses relish control. Type I bosses relin q u ish control.

T E xtending people the freedom th ey need to do great work is usu
ally w ise, but it ’s not alw ays easy. So if you’re feeling the urge to con
trol, here are three ways to begin lettin g go— for your own benefit
and your team ’s:
1. In vo lve p eo p le in g o a l-settin g. W ould you rather set

your own goals or have them foisted upon you? Thought
so. W h y should those w orking w ith you be any differ
ent? A considerable body of research shows that in di
viduals are far more engaged when they’re pursuing
goals they had a hand in creating. So bring employees
into the process. They could surprise you: People often
have higher aim s than the ones you assign them.
2. U se n o n c o n tro llin g la n g u a g e . N ext tim e you’re
about to say “m u st” or “should,” try saying “th ink
about” or “consider” instead. A sm all change in word
in g can help promote engagem ent over com pliance
and m ig h t even reduce some people’s urge to defy.
T hink about it. Or at least consider it, okay?
3. H o ld office h o urs. Som etimes you need to summon
people into your office. B ut sometimes it ’s wise to let
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them come to you. Take a cue from college professors

and set aside one or two hours a w eek when your sched
ule is clear and any employee can come in and talk to
you about anything th at’s on her m ind. Your colleagues
m igh t benefit and you m ight learn som ething.
PLAY “ W H O S E P U R P O S E IS IT A N Y W A Y ? ”
T his is another exercise designed to close the gap between perception

i and reality. Gather your team, your departm ent, or, if you can, all
the employees in your outfit. Hand everyone a blank three-by-five-
inch card. Then ask each person to w rite down his or her one-sentence
answer to the following question: “W h at is our com pany’s (or organiza
tio n ’s) purpose?” Collect the cards and read them aloud. W hat do they
tell you? Are the answers sim ilar, everyone aligned along a common
purpose? Or are they all over the place— some people believing one
th ing, others something com pletely different, and still others without
even a guess? For all the talk about culture, alignm ent, and mission,
most organizations do a pretty shabby job of assessing this aspect of
their business. This sim ple inquiry can offer a glim pse into the soul of
your enterprise. If people don’t know w hy they’re doing what th ey’re
doing, how can you expect them to be m otivated to do it?
USE R E I C H ’S PRONO UN TEST
I ormer U .S. labor secretary Robert B. R eich has devised a sm art,

I sim ple, (and free) diagnostic tool for m easuring the health of an
organization. W hen he talks to em ployees, he listens carefully for the
166
pronouns they use. Do em ployees refer to their com pany as “th ey”
or as “w e”? “T hey” suggests at least some am ount of disengagem ent,
and perhaps even alienation. “W e” suggests the opposite— that
em ployees feel th ey’re part of som ething significant and m eaningful.
If you're a boss, spend a few days listen in g to the people around you,
not only in form al settings lik e m eetings, but in the hallw ays and
at lunch as w ell. Are you a “w e” organization or a “th ey” organiza
tion? The difference m atters. Everybody w ants autonomy, m astery,
and purpose. The th in g is, “w e” can g e t it— but “th ey” can’t.
D E S I G N FOR I N T R I N S I C M O T I V A T I O N
I nternet gu ru and author Clay Sh irky (www.shirky.com ) says th at the

I m ost successful websites and electronic forums have a certain Type I
approach in their DNA. T h ey’re designed— often ex p licitly— to tap
in trin sic m otivation. You can do the same w ith your online presence
if you listen to Shirky and:
• Create an environm ent th at makes people feel good

about p articip ating.
• Give users autonomy.
• Keep the system as open as possible.
And w hat m atters in cyberspace m atters equally in physical space.

Ask yourself: How does the b u ilt environm ent of your workplace
promote or in h ib it autonomy, m astery, and purpose?
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P R O M O T E G O L D I L O C K S FOR G R O U P S
Д lm ost everyone has experienced the satisfaction of a G oldilocks

\ task— the kind th at’s neither too easy nor too hard, that d eliv
ers a delicious sense of flow. B ut sometim es it ’s difficult to replicate
th at experience when you’re w orking in a team. People often end up
doing the jobs they alw ays do because th ey’ve proven they can do
them w ell, and an unfortunate few g et saddled w ith the flow-free
tasks nobody else wants. Here are a few ways to b rin g a little G oldi
locks to your group:
• B e g in w ith a d iv e rse team . As H arvard’s Teresa

A m abile advises, “Set up work groups so that people
w ill stim ulate each other and learn from each other, so
that th ey’re not homogeneous in term s of their back
grounds and train in g. You want people who can really
cross-fertilize each other’s ideas.”
• M ak e yo u r g ro u p a “no c o m p e titio n ” zone. P ittin g
coworkers against one another in the hope that com peti
tion w ill spark them to perform better rarely works—
and alm ost alw ays underm ines intrinsic m otivation. If
you’re going to use a с-word, go w ith “collaboration” or
“cooperation.”
• T ry a little ta sk -sh iftin g . If someone is bored w ith his
current assignm ent, see if he can train someone else in
the skills he’s already mastered. Then see if he can take on
some aspect of a more experienced team m em ber’s work.
• A n im a te w ith p u rp o se , d o n ’t m o tiv a te w ith rew ard s.
N othing bonds a team lik e a shared m ission. The more
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that people share a common cause— whether it ’s creat

ing som ething insanely great, outperform ing an outside
com petitor, or even changing the world— the more your
group w ill do deeply satisfying and outstanding work.
T U R N YOUR NEXT OFF-SITE

I N T O A F e d E x DAY
ehold the com pany off-site, a few spirit-sapping days of forced

fun and m anufactured m orale— featuring aw kw ard pep talks,
wretched dancing, and a few “trust falls.” To be fair, some off-sites
reengage em ployees, recharge people’s batteries, and restart conver
sations on b ig issues. B ut if your organization’s off-sites are fallin g
short, w hy not try replacing the next one w ith a FedEx Day? Set aside
an entire day where em ployees can work on an yth in g they choose,
however they w ant, w ith whomever th ey’d like. M ake sure they have
the tools and resources they need. And impose just one rule: People
m ust deliver som ething— a new idea, a prototype of a product, a bet
ter internal process— the follow ing day. Type I organizations know
w hat their Type X counterparts rarely comprehend: Real challenges
are far more in vigorating than controlled leisure.
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The Zen o f C o m p e n s a t i o n :
Paying People t h e Type I Way
E verybody w a n ts to be p a id w ell. I sure do. I bet y o u ’re th e same. The

Type I approach to m otivation doesn’t req u ire b argain basem ent w a ges
or an a ll-v o lu n teer workforce, but it does d em a n d a n ew approach
to pay.
Think o f th is n ew approach as the Z en o f com pensation: In M oti
vation 3.0, the best use o f money is to take th e issue o f m oney o f f the
table.
T he more prom in en t salary, perks, a n d benefits a re in someone’s
work life, the more th ey can in h ib it crea tiv ity a n d u n ra v el p erfo r
mance. As E dw ard D eci ex p lained in C hapter 3, w hen organizations
use rew a rd s like m oney to m otivate staff, “th a t’s w hen they're most
d em otivating. ” T he better stra tegy is to g e t com pensation righ t— a n d
then g e t it out o f sight. E ffective organiza tions com pensate people in
am ounts a n d in w a ys th a t a llo w in d iv id u a ls to m ostly fo r g e t about
com pensation a n d in stea d focu s on the work itself.
H ere a re three key techniques.
The Zen of Com pensation
1. E N S U R E I N T E R N A L A N D
EXTERNAL FAIRNESS
j he most im portant aspect of any compensation package is fairness.

1 And here, fairness comes in two varieties— internal and external.
Internal fairness means payin g people com mensurate w ith their col
leagues. External fairness means p ayin g people in lin e w ith others
doing sim ilar work in sim ilar organizations.
Let’s look at each type of fairness. Suppose you and Fred have
adjoining cubicles. And suppose yo u’ve got p retty m uch equivalent
responsibility and experience. If Fred makes scads more money than
you, yo u’ll be m iffed. Because of this violation of internal fairness,
your m otivation w ill plum m et. Now suppose instead that you and
Fred are both auditors w ith ten years’ experience w orking in a For
tune 200 company. If you discover that sim ilarly experienced au d i
tors at other Fortune 200 firms are m aking double your salaries, both
you and Fred w ill experience a largely irreversible m otivation dip.
The com pany has violated the ethic of external fairness. (One im por
tant addendum : Paying people the Type I w ay doesn’t mean payin g
everyone the same am ount. If Fred has a harder job or contributes
more to the organization than you, he deserves a richer deal. A nd, as
it turns out, several studies have shown that most people don’t have
a beef w ith that. W hy? It’s fair.)
G ettin g the internal and external equity rig h t isn ’t itself a m o ti
vator. B ut it is a w ay to avoid p u ttin g the issue of money back on the
table and m aking it a isfc-motivator.
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2. PAY M O R E T H A N A V E R A G E
1 f you have provided adequate baseline rewards and established

ji
i internal and external fairness, consider borrowing a strategy first
surfaced by a N obel laureate. In the m id -1 980 s, George Akerlof, who
later won the Nobel Prize in economics, and his w ife, Jan et Yellen,
who’s also an economist, discovered that some companies seemed to
be overpaying th eir workers. Instead of payin g em ployees the wages
that supply and dem and w ould have predicted, they gave their w ork
ers a little more. It w asn’t because the companies were selfless and
it wasn’t because they were stupid. It was because they were savvy.
P aying great people a little more than the m arket dem ands, A kerlof
and Yellen found, could attract better talen t, reduce turnover, and
boost productivity and morale.
H igh er wages could actually reduce a com pany’s costs.
The pay-m ore-than-average approach can offer an elegant way
to bypass “if-then” rewards, elim inate concerns about unfairness,
and help take the issue of money off the table. It’s another w ay to
allow people to focus on the work itself. Indeed, other economists
have shown that providing an employee a high level of base pay does
more to boost performance and organizational com m itm ent than an
attractive bonus structure.
O f course, by the very nature of the exercise, p ayin g above the
average w ill work for only about h alf of you. So get go in g before your
com petitors do.
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The Zen of C o m pe nsatio n
3. IF YOU U S E P E R F O R M A N C E M E T R I C S ,
M A K E T H E M W I D E - R A N G I N G , RELEVANT,
A N D H A R D TO G A M E
I m agine you’re a product m anager and your pay depends largely on

! reaching a particular sales goal for the next quarter. If you’re sm art,
or if you’ve got a fam ily to feed, you’re goin g to try m ig h tily to hit
that number. You probably w on’t concern yourself m uch w ith the
quarter after th at or the health of the company or whether the firm
is investing enough in research and developm ent. And if you’re ner
vous, you m ig h t cut corners to reach your quarterly goal.
Now im agin e you’re a product m anager and your pay is deter
m ined by these factors: your sales for the next quarter; your sales
in the current year; the com pany’s revenue and profit in the next
two years; levels of satisfaction am ong your custom ers; ideas for
new products; and evaluations of your coworkers. If you’re sm art,
you’ll probably try to sell your product, serve your custom ers, help
your team m ates, and, w ell, do good work. W hen m etrics are varied,
th ey’re harder to finagle.
In addition, the gain for reaching the m etrics shouldn’t be too
large. W h en the payoff for reaching targets is modest, rather than
m assive, i t ’s less lik e ly to narrow people’s focus or encourage them to
take the low road.
To be sure, finding the rig h t m ix of m etrics is difficult and w ill
vary considerably across organizations. And some people w ill in evi
tably find a w ay to gam e even the most carefully calibrated system .
But using a variety of measures that reflect the to tality of great work
can transform often counterproductive “if-then” rewards into less
com bustible “now th at” rewards.
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Type I f o r Parents and E d u ca t or s:
N ine Ideas f o r H e l p i n g Our Kids
A ll kids sta rt out as curious, self-d irected Type Vs. B u t m any o f

them en d up as disen gaged, com pliant Type X ’s. W hat’s go in g on?
M aybe th e problem is us— the a d u lts w h o a re ru n n in g schools a n d
h ea d in g fa m ilies. I f w e w a n t to equip yo u n g people f o r the n ew w o r ld
o f work— and, more im portant, i f w e w a n t them to le a d sa tisfy
in g lives— w e need to break M otivation 2 .0 ’s grip on edu cation a n d
pa ren tin g.
U nfortunately, as w ith business, there’s a m ism atch between w h a t
science knows a n d w h a t schools do. Science knows (a n d you do, too,
i f you rea d C hapter 2 ) th a t i f you prom ise a preschooler a fa n c y cer
tificate f o r d ra w in g a pictu re, th a t ch ild w i l l lik ely d r a w a p ictu re
f o r y o u — a n d then lose fu r th er interest in d ra w in g. Yet in the fa c e o f
th is evidence— a n d as the w o r ld economy dem ands more nonroutine,
creative, conceptual a b ilities— too m any schools a re m ovin g in the
w ro n g direction. T hey're redou blin g th eir em phasis on routines, righ t
answ ers, a n d standardization. A nd th ey ’re h a u lin g out a w agon f u l l
o f “if-th en ” rew ards—pizza fo r rea d in g books, iP ods f o r sh oivin g up
to class, cash f o r go o d test scores. We’re b rib in g students into com pli
an ce in stea d o f ch a llen gin g them into engagem ent.
T y p e I f or P a r en t s and E d u c a t o r s
We can do better. A nd w e should. I f w e w a n t to ra ise Type I kids,

a t school a n d a t home, w e need to help them m ove to w a rd autonom y,
m astery, a n d purpose. H ere a re n in e w a ys to sta rt the journey.
APPLY T H E TH R E E - P A R T TYPE I
T E S T FOR H O M E W O R K
s oes the homework b u lg in g from k id s’ backpacks tru ly help

D them learn? Or does it sim p ly steal their free tim e in the service
of a false sense of rigor? Teachers, before you dole out yet another
tim e-consum ing assignm ent, run it through this Type I homework
test by asking yourself three questions:
• Am I offering students any autonom y over how and

when to do this work?
• Does this assignm ent promote m astery by offering a
novel, en gagin g task (as opposed to rote reform ulation
of som ething already covered in class)?
• Do m y students understand the purpose of this assign
m ent? That is, can they see how doing this additional
activity at home contributes to the larger enterprise in
w hich the class is engaged?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, can you refashion the
assignm ent? A nd parents, are you looking at homework assignm ents
every so often to see w hether they promote com pliance or engage
m ent? Let’s not waste our kid s’ tim e on m eaningless exercises. W ith a
little thought and effort, we can then h o m ew o rk into hom^learning.
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HAVE A F edE x DAY
j n Chapter 4 , we learned how the software com pany A tlassian injects

»s a burst of autonom y into its workplace by settin g aside a day each
quarter when employees can work on any project they choose, how
ever they w ant, w ith whomever th ey’d lik e. W h y not try this w ith
your students— or even your own sons and daughters? Set aside an
entire school day (or a fam ily vacation day) and ask kids to come
up w ith a problem to solve or a project to tackle. In advance, help
them collect the tools, inform ation, and supplies they m igh t need.
Then let them have at it. The next m orning, ask them to deliver—
by reporting back to the class or the fam ily on th eir discoveries and
experiences. It’s lik e P roject R u m m y — only the kids come up w ith
the project them selves, and the reward at the end of the day is the
chance to share w hat th ey’ve created and all th ey’ve learned along
the way.
T RY DI Y R E P O R T C A R D S
T oo m any students w alk through the schoolhouse door w ith one

t aim in m ind: to g et good grades. And all too often, the best way
to reach this goal is to g et w ith the program , avoid risks, and serve
up the answers the teacher wants the w ay the teacher wants them .
Good grades become a reward for com pliance— but don’t have much
to do w ith learning. M eanw hile, students whose grades don’t m ea
sure up often see them selves as failures and give up tryin g to learn.
The Type I approach is different. Report cards are not a potential
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Type I for Parents and Educators
prize, but a w ay to offer students useful feedback on their progress.

And Type I students understand th at a great w ay to get feedback is
to evaluate th eir own progress.
So try experim enting w ith the D IY (do it yourself) report card.
A t the b eginn ing of a semester, ask students to list th eir top learn
in g goals. Then, at the end of the semester, ask them to create their
own report card along w ith a one- or two-paragraph review of their
progress. W here did they succeed? W here did they fall short? W h at
more do they need to learn? Once students have com pleted their
DIY report cards, show them the teacher’s report card, and let the
comparison of the two be the start of a conversation on how they are
doing on their path toward mastery. M aybe even include students in
any parent-teacher conferences. (Parents: If your ch ild ’s teacher won’t
go for these D IY report cards, try it yourself at home. It’s another
way to prevent school from changing your ch ild ’s default settin g and
tu rn in g him from Type I to Type X .)
GI V E Y O U R K I D S A N A L L O W A N C E
A N D S O M E C H O R E S — B U T D O N ’T
COMBINE THEM
I 1 ere’s w hy an allowance is good for kids: H aving a little of their

I i own money, and deciding how to save or spend it, offers a m ea
sure of autonom y and teaches them to be responsible w ith cash.
H ere’s w hy household chores are good for kids: Chores show kids
that fam ilies are b u ilt on m utual obligations and that fam ily m em
bers need to help each other.
H ere’s w hy com bining allowances w ith chores is not good for
kids. B y lin k in g money to the com pletion of chores, parents turn an
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allowance into an “if-then” reward. T his sends kids a clear (and

clearly w rongheaded) m essage: In the absence of a paym ent, no self-
respecting ch ild w ould w illin g ly set the table, em pty the garbage, or
m ake her own bed. It converts a moral and fam ilial obligation into
just another com m ercial transaction— and teaches th at the only rea
son to do a less-than-desirable task for your fam ily is in exchange for
paym ent. This is a case where com bining two good things gives you
less, not more. So keep allowance and chores separate, and you just
m ig h t get that trash can em ptied. Even better, your kids w ill begin
to learn the difference between principles and payoffs.
O F F E R P R A I S E . . . T H E R I G H T WAY
; ' one rig h t, praise is an im portant w ay to give kids feedback and

I e n c o u r a g e m e n t. B ut done wrong, praise can become yet another
“if-th en ” reward that can squash creativity and stifle intrinsic
m otivation.
The powerful work of psychologist Carol D weck, as w ell as oth
ers in the field, offers a how-to list for offering praise in a w ay that
promotes Type I behavior:
• P ra ise effo rt an d strate g y, n o t in te llig e n c e . As

D w eck’s research has shown, children who are praised
for “being sm art” often believe th at every encounter is
a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking
dum b, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest
path. By contrast, kids who understand th at effort and
hard work lead to m astery and grow th are more w illin g
to take on new, difficult tasks.
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Type I fo r Parents and Educators
• M ak e p r a is e sp ecific. Parents and teachers should give

kids useful inform ation about th eir performance. Instead
of bath ing them in generalities, te ll them specifically
w hat th ey’ve done th at’s noteworthy.
• P ra ise in p riv a te. Praise is feedback— not an award cer
emony. That's w hy it ’s often best to offer it one-on-one,
in private.
• O ffer p r a is e o n ly w h e n th e re ’s a g o o d re aso n fo r
it. Don’t kid a kid . He can see through fake praise in
a nanosecond. Be sincere— or keep quiet. If you over
praise, kids regard it as dishonest and unearned. Plus,
overpraising becomes another “if-th en ” reward that
makes earning praise, rather than m oving toward m as
tery, the objective.
H E L P K I D S SE E T H E BI G P I C T U R E
| n education system s tilted toward standardized tests, grades, and

I “if-th en ” rewards, students often have no idea w hy th ey’re doing
w hat th ey’re doing. Turn that around by helping them glim p se the
big picture. W hatever th ey’re stud yin g, be sure they can answer
these questions: W hy am I lea rn in g th is? H ow is it releva n t to th e w o r ld
I liv e in n ow ? Then get out of the classroom and apply w hat th ey’re
studyin g. If th ey’re learning Spanish, take them to an office, a store,
or a com m unity center where they can actually speak the language.
If th ey’re stud yin g geom etry, have them draw up architectural plans
for an addition to your school or home. If th ey’re takin g history, ask
them to apply w hat th ey’ve learned to an event in the news. T h in k of
it as the fourth R: reading, w ritin g , arithm etic . . . and relevance.
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C H E C K O U T T H E S E FI VE T Y P E I S C H O O L S
lthough most schools around the w orld are s till b u ilt atop the
A M otivation 2.0 operating system , a num ber of forw ard-thinking
educators have long understood that young people are brim m ing
w ith the th ird drive. Here are five Type I schools in the U nited States
w ith practices to em ulate and stories to inspire.
• B ig P ic tu re L earn in g . Since 1996, w ith the opening

of its flagship public high school, the M et, in Provi
dence, Rhode Island, B ig Picture Learning has been
creating places that cultivate engagem ent rather than
dem and com pliance. Founded by two veteran education
innovators, Dennis L ittk y and E lliot Washor, B ig Pic
ture is a nonprofit that now has sixty-plus schools
around the U nited States that p ut students in charge
of th eir own education. B ig Picture kids g e t the basics.
B ut they also use those basics and acquire other skills by
doing real work in the com m unity— all under the g u id
ance of an experienced adult tutor. And instead of easily
gam ed M otivation 2.0 m easurem ents, B ig Picture kids
are assessed the w ay adults are— on work performance,
in d ivid ual presentations, effort, attitu d e, and behavior
on the job. M ost of the students at the M et and other
B ig Picture schools are “at risk ” low-incom e and m inor
ity kids who’ve been poorly served by conventional
schools. Yet thanks to this innovative Type I approach,
more than 95 percent graduate and go on to college. For
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Type I for Parents and Educator s
more inform ation, go to http://www.bigpicture.org/.

(Full disclosure: I have served, unpaid, on the board of
directors of B ig Picture since 20 07 .)
• S u d b u r y V alle y School. Take a look at this indepen
dent school in F ram ingham , M assachusetts, to see what
happens when young kids have genuine autonomy.
W o rkin g from the assum ption th at all hum an beings are
natu rally curious and th at the best kind of learning hap
pens when it ’s in itiated and pursued by the one doing
the learn in g, Sudbury V alley School gives its students
total control over the task, tim e, and technique of their
learning. Teachers and staff are there to help them m ake
things happen. This is a school where en gagem ent is the
rule and com pliance isn’t an option. For more inform a
tion, go to http://www.sudval.org/.
• T h e T in k e rin g School. More of a lab than a school, this
sum m er program , created by com puter scientist Gever
Tulley, lets children from seven to seventeen p lay around
w ith interesting stuff and build cool things. A t the head
quarters in Montara, California, T ulley’s tinkerers have
b uilt: w orking zip-lines, motorcycles, toothbrush robots,
roller coasters, and plastic bag bridges strong enough to
hold people. Most of us aren’t able to ship our kids out to
California for a week of tinkering, but we can all learn the
“Five Dangerous T hings You Should Let Your Children
Do.” So take nine m inutes to listen to T ulley’s 2007 online
TED Talk of that title. Then hand your kids a pocket-
knife, some power tools, and a book of matches— and get
out of the way. For more information, go to http://www
.tinkeringschool.com/ (includes a lin k to T ulley’s talk).
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• P u g e t S o u n d C o m m u n ity School. Like Sudbury and

B ig Picture, this tin y independent school in Seattle,
W ashington, gives its students a radical dose of auton
omy, turn in g the “one size fits a ll” approach of conven
tional schools on its head. Each student has an adviser
who acts as her personal coach, help in g her come up w ith
her own learning goals. “School” consists of a m ixture of
class tim e and self-created independent study projects,
along w ith com m unity service devised by the students.
Since youngsters are often away from cam pus, they gain
a clear sense that their learning has a real-w orld pur
pose. And rather than chase after grades, they receive
frequent, inform al feedback from advisers, teachers, and
peers. For more inform ation, go to www.pscs.org.
• M o n tesso ri Schools. Dr. M aria Montessori developed
the Montessori method of teaching in the early 1900s
after observing children’s natural curiosity and innate
desire to learn. Her early understanding of the third drive
spawned a worldwide network of schools, m ostly for pre
school and prim ary-aged children. M any of the key tenets
of a Montessori education resonate w ith the principles
of M otivation 3.0— that children naturally engage in
self-directed learning and independent study; that teach
ers should act as observers and facilitators of that learning,
and not as lecturers or commanders; and that children are
naturally inclined to experience periods of intense focus,
concentration, and flow that adults should do their best
not to interrupt. Although Montessori schools are rare
at the junior high and high school levels, every school,
educator, and parent can learn from its enduring and suc
cessful approach. M eantim e, w hile you’re investigating
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Type I for Parents and Educ ato rs
Montessori, check out two other approaches to learning

that also promote Type I behavior: the R eggio E m ilia
philosophy for the education of young children and
the W aldorf schools. For more information, visit these
websites: w w w .m ontessori-am i.org,www.m ontessori.org,
w w w .a m s h q .o r g ,w w w .reggioalliance.org, and www.
why waldorfworks .org.
TAKE A CLASS FROM THE U N S C H O O LER S
| n the U nited States, the homeschooling movem ent has been grow -
I in g at a rem arkable pace over the past tw enty years. And the
fastest-grow ing segm ent of that movem ent is the “unschoolers”—
fam ilies that don’t use a formal curriculum and instead allow their
children to explore and learn w hat interests them . Unschoolers have
been am ong the fi rst to adopt a Type 1 approach to education. They
promote autonom y by allow ing youngsters to decide w hat they learn
and how they learn it. They encourage m astery by allow ing children
to spend as long as th ey’d lik e and to go as deep as they desire on the
topics that interest them . Even if unschooling is not for you or your
kids, you can learn a th in g or two from these educational innovators.
Start by reading John Taylor G atto’s extraordinary book, D um bing
Us D ow n. Take a look at Home E ducation M agaz in e and its website.
Then check out some of the m any other unschooling sites on the
W eb. For more inform ation, go to w ww .unschooling.com and
w w w .sandradodd .com/unschooling.h tm l.
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T U R N S T U D E N T S INTO TE ACH ERS
ne of the best ways to know whether you’ve m astered som ething

V./ is to try to teach it. Give students that opportunity. A ssign
each p up il in a class a different aspect of the broader topic you’re
stu d yin g— and then have them take turns teaching w hat th ey’ve
learned to their classmates. And once th ey’ve got it down, give them
a w ider audience by in vitin g other classes, teachers, parents, or school
adm inistrators to learn w hat they have to teach.
Also, at the start of a school term , ask students about their in d i
vidual passions and areas of expertise. Keep a list of your experts, and
then call upon them as needed throughout the term . A classroom of
teachers is a classroom of learners.
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The Type I R ea di ng List:
Fi f t een Essential Books
A utonomy, m astery, a n d purpose a re in tegra l to the hum an condition,

so it ’s no surprise th a t a num ber o f w riters—fro m p sych ologists to
jo u rn a lists to novelists— h a ve ex plored these three elem ents a n d prob ed
w h a t th ey m ean fo r our lives. T his list o f books, a rra n ged alp h a b eti
c a lly by author, isn't ex haustive— but i t ’s a g o o d sta rtin g p o in t f o r
a n yon e in terested in cu ltiv a tin g a Type I life.
Finite and Infinite Games:

A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
B Y JA M E S P. C A R SE
In his elegant little book, religious scholar Carse describes two types
of gam es. A “finite gam e” has a w inner and an end; the goal is to
trium ph. An “infinite gam e” has no w inner and no end; the goal is
to keep p layin g. N onw innable gam es, Carse explains, are m uch more
rew arding than the w in-lose ones w e’re accustom ed to p layin g at our
work and in our relationships.
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Type I Insight'. “Finite players play w ith in boundaries; infinite

players p lay w ith boundaries.”
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates

World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
B Y G E O F F C O LVIN
W h a t’s the difference between those who are p retty good at what
they do and those who are m asters? F ortune m agazine’s Colvin scours
the evidence and shows th at the answer is threefold: practice, prac
tice, practice. B ut it ’s not just any practice, he says. The secret is
“deliberate practice”— h ig h ly repetitive, m en tally dem anding work
th at’s often unpleasant, but undeniably effective.
Type I In sigh t: “If you set a goal of becom ing an expert in your
business, you would im m ed iately start doing all kinds of things you
don’t do now.”
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

B Y M IH A L Y C SIK SZ E N T M IH A L Y I
I t’s tough to find a better argum ent for w orking hard at som ething
you love than C sikszentm ihalyi’s landm ark book on “optim al experi
ences.” F low describes those exhilarating moments when we feel in
control, full of purpose, and in the zone. A nd it reveals how people
have turned even the most unpleasant tasks into enjoyable, reward
ing challenges.
Type I In sigh t: “Contrary to w hat we usually believe . . . the best
m oments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing tim es—
although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked
hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a per
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son’s body or m ind is stretched to the lim its in a voluntary effort to

accom plish som ething difficult and w orthw hile.”
For more of C sikszen tm ih alyi’s ideas, check out three of his
other books: F in d in g F low : T he P sych ology o f E ngagem ent w ith E very
d a y L ife; C rea tivity: F low a n d th e P sych ology o f D iscovery a n d Invention;
and the classic B eyon d Boredom a n d A nxiety: E xperiencing F low in Work
a n d P lay.
Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation

B Y E D W A R D L . D E CI W IT H R IC H A R D FLA ST E
In 1995, Edward Deci wrote a short book th at introduced his power

ful theories to a popular audience. In clear, readable prose, he discusses
the lim itatio ns of a society based on control, explains the origins of
his landm ark experim ents, and shows how to promote autonom y in
the m any realm s of our lives.
Type I Insight'. “The questions so m any people ask— namely, ‘How
do I m otivate people to learn? to work? to do their chores? or to take
th eir m edicine?’— are the wrong questions. They are wrong because
they im p ly that m otivation is som ething that gets done to people
rather than som ething th at people do.”
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

BY CAROL D W ECK
Stanford’s Dweck d istills her decades of research to a sim ple pair of

ideas. People can have two different m indsets, she says. Those w ith
a “fixed m in d set” believe that their talents and ab ilities are carved in
stone. Those w ith a “grow th m in d set” believe that their talents and
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ab ilities can be developed. Fixed m indsets see every encounter as a

test of th eir worthiness. G rowth m indsets see the same encounters as
opportunities to improve. D w eck’s message: Go w ith grow th.
Type I Insight'. In the book and likew ise on her w ebsite,
w w w .m indsetonline.com , Dweck offers concrete steps for m oving
from a fixed to a grow th m indset:
• Learn to listen for a fixed m indset “voice” that m ig h t be

h urtin g your resiliency.
• Interpret challenges not as roadblocks, but as opportu
nities to stretch yourself.
• Use the language of grow th— for exam ple, “I’m not sure
I can do it now, but I th ink I can learn w ith tim e and
effort.”
Then We Came to the End

B Y JO S H U A FE R R IS
This darkly hilarious debut novel is a cautionary tale for the demor
alizin g effects of the Type X workplace. A t an unnam ed ad agency in
Chicago, people spend more tim e scarfing free doughnuts and scam-
m in g office chairs than doing actual work— all w hile fretting about
“w alk in g Spanish down the h a ll,” office lin go for being fired.
Type I Insight'. “They had taken away our flowers, our sum m er
days, and our bonuses, we were on a wage freeze and a h irin g freeze
and people were flying out the door lik e so m any dism antled dum
m ies. W e had one th ing s till going for us: the prospect of a pro
m otion. A new title: true, it came w ith no money, the power was
alm ost alw ays illusory, the bestowal a cheap shrewd device concocted
by m anagem ent to keep us from m utiny, but when word circulated
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T he T y p e I R e a d i n g List: F if t een Essenti al Books
that one of us had jum ped up an acronym , that person was just a
little quieter that day, took a longer lunch than usual, came back
w ith shopping bags, spent the afternoon speaking softly into the
telephone, and left whenever they wanted that n igh t, w hile the rest
of us sent em ails flying back and forth on the lofty topics of Injustice
and U ncertain ty.”
Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

B Y H O W A R D G A R D N E R , M IH A L Y C SIK SZ E N T M IH A L Y I,
A N D W IL L IA M D AM O N
How can you do “good w ork” in an age of relentless m arket forces

and ligh tn in g-fast technology? B y considering three basic issues:
your profession’s m ission, its sta n da rd s or “best practices,” and your
own id en tity. A lthough this book focuses m ain ly on exam ples from
the fields of genetics and journalism , its insights can be applied to a
num ber of professions buffeted by changing tim es. The authors have
also continued their effort to identify in dividuals and institutions
that exem plify “good w ork” on th eir w ebsite: w w w .goodwork.org.
Type I In sigh t: “W h at do you do if you wake up in the m orning
and dread goin g to work, because the d aily routine no longer satisfies
your standards?”
• Start groups or forums w ith others in your industry or

outside it to reach beyond your current area of influence.
• W ork w ith existin g organizations to confirm your pro
fession’s values or develop new guidelines.
• Take a stand. It can be risky, sure, but leaving a job for
ethical reasons need not involve abandoning your pro
fessional goals.
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Outliers: The Story of Success

BY M ALCOLM GLADW ELL
W ith a series of com pelling and gracefully told stories, G ladw ell
deftly takes a ham m er to the idea of the “self-m ade m an .” Success is
more com plicated, he says. H igh achievers— from young Canadian
hockey players to B ill Gates to the Beatles— are often the products of
hidden advantages of culture, tim in g, dem ographics, and luck that
helped them become masters in their fields. R eading this book w ill
lead you to reevaluate your own path. More im portant, it w ill make
you wonder how much hum an potential w e’re losing when so m any
people are denied these advantages.
Type I In sigh t: “It is not how much money we m ake that u lti
m ately m akes us happy between nine-to-five. I t’s w hether our work
fulfills us. If I offered you a choice between being an architect for
$ 7 5 ,0 0 0 a year and w orking in a tollbooth every day for the rest of
your life for $ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 a year, which w ould you take? I’m guessing
the former, because there is com plexity, autonomy, and a relationship
between effort and reward in doing creative work, and th at’s worth
more to m ost of us than money. ”
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

B Y D O R IS K E A R N S G O O D W IN
In her en tertaining popular history, Goodwin shows Abraham Lin

coln as an exem plar of Type I behavior. H e worked m ig h tily to
achieve m astery in law and politics. He gave his staunchest rivals
power and autonomy. And he developed a leadership style rooted in
a h igher purpose— ending slavery and keeping the union intact.
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Type I In sight. Goodwin sheds lig h t on Lincoln’s Type I leadership

skills. Am ong them :
• H e was self-confident enough to surround h im self w ith

rivals who excelled in areas where he was weak.
• H e gen u in ely listened to other people’s points of view,
w hich helped him form more complex opinions of
his own.
• H e gave credit where it was due and w asn’t afraid to
take the blam e.
The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and

Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal
B Y D A V ID H A L B E R ST A M
W h at w ould compel a group of m en to endure untold physical pain

and exhaustion for a sport that prom ised no m onetary compensa
tion or fame? T h at’s the question at the heart of H alberstam ’s rivet
in g narrative about the 1984 U .S. row ing trials, a book that offers a
g lim p se into the fires of intrinsic m otivation.
Type I In sigh t: “No chartered planes or buses ferried the athletes
into Princeton. No team m anagers hustled their baggage from rhe
bus to the hotel desk and made arrangem ents so that at m ealtim e
they need only show up and sign a tab. This was a world of hitched
rides and borrowed beds, and m eals, if not scrounged, were desper
ately budgeted by ap p allin g ly h un gry young m en.”
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Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars,

Incentive Plans, A ’s, Praise, and Other Bribes
B Y ALFIE K O H N
Former teacher Kohn throws down the gau n tlet at society’s blind
acceptance of B. F. Skinner’s “Do this and you’ll g et th at” theory of
behaviorism . This 1993 book ranges across school, w ork, and private
life in its indictm ent of extrinsic m otivators and paints a com pelling
picture of a world w ithout them .
Type I In sigh t: “Do rewards m otivate people? Absolutely. They
m otivate people to get rew ards.”
Kohn has w ritten eleven books on parenting, education, and
behavior— as w ell as scores of articles on th at topic— all of which are
interestin g and provocative. There’s more inform ation on his w eb
site: www.alfiekohn.org.
Once a Runner
B Y JO H N L . P A R K E R , J R .
P arker’s novel, o rigin ally published in 1978 and kept alive by a

devoted coterie of fans, offers a fascinating look into the psychol
ogy of distance running. Through the tale of college m iler Quenton
Cassidy, we see the toll that m astery can take— and the th rill it can
produce when it ’s realized.
Type I In sigh t: “He ran not for crypto-religious reasons but to w in
races, to cover ground fast. Not only to be better than his fellows,
but better than him self. To be faster by a tenth of a second, by an
inch, by two feet or two yards, than he had been the week or year
before. He sought to conquer the physical lim itatio ns placed on him
by a three-dim ensional world (and if Tim e is the fourth dim ension,
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that too was his province). If he could conquer the weakness, the
cowardice in him self, he w ould not worry about the rest; it w ould
com e.”
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks

and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
B Y ST E V E N PR E SSFIE L D
Pressfield’s potent book is both a w ise m editation on the obstacles

that stand in the w ay of creative freedom and a sp irited b attle plan
for overcom ing the resistance th at arises when we set out to do some
th in g great. If you’re looking for a quick jo lt on your journey toward
m astery, this is it.
Type I In sight: “It m ay be that the hum an race is not ready for free
dom. The air of lib erty m ay be too rarified for us to breathe. C ertain ly
I w ouldn’t be w ritin g this book, on this subject, if liv in g w ith free
dom were easy. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates dem onstrated
long ago, that the tru ly free in d ivid ual is free only to the extent of
his own self-mastery. W h ile those who w ill not govern them selves
are condemned to find masters to govern over th em .”
Maverick: The Success Story Behind the

World’s Most Unusual Workplace
B Y R IC A R D O SE M LE R
W h ile m any bosses are control freaks, Sem ler m ig h t be the first
autonom y freak. He transformed the Brazilian m anufacturing firm
Semco through a series of radical steps. He canned m ost executives,
elim inated job titles, let the com pany’s three thousand employees
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set their own hours, gave everyone a vote in big decisions, and even
let some workers determ ine their own salaries. The result: U nder
Sem ler’s (non)command, Semco has grown 20 percent a year for the
past two decades. This book, along w ith Sem ler’s more recent The
Seven-D ay Weekend, shows how to put his iconoclastic and effective
philosophy into action.
Type I In sigh t: “I w ant everyone at Semco to be self-sufficient. The
com pany is organized— w ell, m aybe th at’s not qu ite the righ t word
for us— not to depend too m uch on any in d ivid ual, especially me. I
take it as a point of pride that twice on m y return from long trips m y
office had been moved— and each tim e it got sm aller.”
The Fifth Discipline: The Art and

Practice of the Learning Organization
B Y PE T E R M . SE N G E
In his m anagem ent classic, Senge introduces readers to “learning

organizations”— where autonomous th in k in g and shared visions for
the future are not only encouraged, but are considered vital to the
health of the organization. Senge’s “five d iscip lin es” offer a sm art
organizational companion to Type I behavior.
Type I In sigh t: “People w ith a high level of personal m astery are
able to consistently realize the results th at m atter most deeply to
them — in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach
a work of art. They do that by becoming com m itted to their own
lifelong learn in g .”
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Listen t o t h e G ur us:
Six Business T h i n k e r s W h o Get It
W hile the list o f com panies th a t em brace Type I th in k in g is distress

in g ly short, the blueprints f o r b u ild in g such organ izations a re rea d ily
a va ila b le. T he fo llo w in g six business thinkers o ffer som e w ise g u id
an ce fo r d esign in g organiza tions th a t prom ote autonom y, m astery, a n d
purpose.
DO UG LAS McGREGOR
W h o : A social psychologist and one of the first professors at M IT ’s

Sloan School of M anagem ent. H is landm ark I9 6 0 book, The H uman
Side o f E nterprise, gave the practice of m anagem ent a badly needed
shot of hum anism .
B ig Id e a : T h eo ry X v s. T h e o ry Y. M cG regor described two

very different approaches to m anagem ent, each based on a differ
ent assum ption about hum an behavior. The first approach, which
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he called Theory X, assumed that people avoid effort, work only for
m oney and security, and therefore need to be controlled. The second,
w hich he called Theory Y, assumed that work is as natural for hum an
beings as p lay or rest, that in itiative and creativity are widespread,
and that if people are com m itted to a goal, they w ill actually seek
responsibility. Theory Y, he argued, was the more accurate— and
u ltim ate ly more effective— approach.
T ype I I n sig h t: “M anagers frequently com plain to me about the fact

th at subordinates ‘nowadays’ won’t take responsibility. I have been
interested to note how often these same m anagers keep a constant
surveillance over the day-to-day performance of subordinates, some
tim es two or three levels below them selves.”
M o re In fo : As I explained in Chapter 3, T he H um an S ide o f Enterprise

is a key ancestor of M otivation 3.0. A lthough M cG regor wrote the
book a full fifty years ago, his observations about the lim its of control
rem ain sm art, fresh, and relevant.
P E T E R F. D R U C K E R
W h o : The most influential m anagem ent thinker of the tw entieth

century. H e wrote an astonishing forty-one books, influenced the
th in k in g of two generations of CEOs, received a U .S. Presidential
M edal of Freedom, and taugh t for three decades at the Claremont
G raduate U niversity Business School that now bears his name.
B ig Id e a: S e lf-m a n ag e m e n t. “D rucker’s p rim ary contribution

is not a single idea,” J im Collins once w rote, “but rather an entire
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L i s t e n t o t h e G u r u s : S i x B u s i n e s s T h i n k e r s W h o G e t It
body of work th at has one g ig a n tic advantage: nearly all of it is

essentially r ig h t.” D rucker coined the term “know ledge w orker,”
foresaw the rise of the nonprofit sector, and was am ong the first
to stress the prim acy of the custom er in business strategy. B ut
although he’s best known for his thoughts on m anaging businesses,
toward the end of his career D rucker signaled the next frontier:
self-m an agem en t. W ith the rise of in d ivid ual longevity and the decline
of job security, he argued, in dividuals have to th in k hard about
where their strengths lie, w hat they can contribute, and how they
can im prove th eir own performance. “The need to m anage oneself,”
he wrote shortly before he died in 20 0 5 , is “creating a revolution in
hum an affairs.”
T ype I I n sig h t: “D em anding of know ledge workers that they define

their own task and its results is necessary because know ledge workers
m ust be autonomous . . . workers should be asked to th in k through
their own work plans and then to subm it them . W hat am I g o in g to
fo cu s on ? W hat results can be expected f o r w h ich I sh o u ld be h eld a ccou n t
a b le? B y w h a t d ea d lin e? ”
M ore In fo : D rucker wrote m any books, and m any have been w ritten
about h im , but a great startin g place is T he D a ily Drucker, a sm all
gem th at provides 366 in sights and “action points” for p u ttin g his
ideas into practice. On the topic of self-m anagem ent, read D rucker’s
2005 H a rva rd B usiness R eview article, “M anaging O neself.” For more
inform ation and access to d ig ita l archives of his w ritin g , check out
w w w .druckerinstitute.com .
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JIM C O LLIN S
W h o : One of the most authoritative voices in business today and

the author of B u ilt to h a s t (w ith Je rry Porras), G ood to G reat, and,
most recently, H ow the M igh ty Fall. A former professor at the Stanford
G raduate School of Business, he now operates his own m anagem ent
lab in Boulder, Colorado.
B ig Id e a : S e lf-m o tiv a tio n an d g re a tn e ss. “Expending energy try

in g to m otivate people is largely a waste of tim e ,” Collins wrote in
G ood to G reat. “If you have the righ t people on the bus, they w ill be
self-m otivated. The real question then becomes: H ow do you m anage
in such a w a y a s not to d e-m otiva tep eop le?"
T ype I In sig h t: Collins suggests four basic practices for creating a

culture where self-m otivation can flourish:
1. “Lead w ith questions, not answ ers.”

2. “Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.”
3. “Conduct autopsies, w ithout b lam e.”
4. “B uild ‘red flag’ m echanism s.” In other words, m ake it easy
for employees and customers to speak up when they iden
tify a problem.
M o re In fo : C ollins’s w ebsite, w w w .jim collins.com , contains more

inform ation about his work, as w ell as excellent diagnostic tools,
guid es, and videos.
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L i s t e n t o t h e G u r u s : S i x B u s i n e s s T h i n k e r s W h o G e t It
CA L I R E S S L E R A N D JO D Y T H O M P S O N
W h o : These two former hum an resources professionals at Best B uy

persuaded their CEO to experim ent w ith a radical new approach to
organizing work. They wrote a book about their experiences, W hy
Work Sucks a n d H ow to Fix It, and now run their own consultancy.
B ig Id e a: T h e re s u lts-o n ly w o r k e n v iro n m e n t. RO W E , described

in Chapter 4, affords em ployees com plete autonom y over when,
where, and how they do th eir work. The only th ing th at m atters is
results.
T ype I I n sig h t: A m ong the basic tenets of RO W E:
“People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste

of their tim e, the custom er’s tim e, or their com pany’s
tim e .”
“Employees have the freedom to work any way they w ant.”
“Every m eeting is optional.”
“There are no w ork schedules.”
M ore In fo : You can learn more about RO W E at their w ebsite:

w ww.gorowe.com .
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GARY H A M E L
W h o : “The w orld’s leading expert on business strategy,” according

to BusinessW eek. H e’s the coauthor of the influential book C om peting
f o r the F uture, a professor of the London Business School, and the
director of the California-based M Lab, where he’s spearheading the
p ursuit of “moon shots for m anagem ent”— a set of huge challenges
to reform the theory and practice of running organizations.
B ig Id e a: M a n ag em en t is an o u td a te d tech n o lo g y. H am el likens
m anagem ent to the internal com bustion engine— a technology that
has largely stopped evolving. Put a 1960s-era CEO in a tim e m achine
and transport him to 20 1 0 , H am el says, and that CEO “would find a
great m any of today’s m anagem ent rituals little changed from those
that governed corporate life a generation or two ago .” Sm all won
der, H am el explains. “M ost of the essential tools and techniques of
modern m anagem ent were invented by individuals born in the 19th
century, not long after the end of the A m erican C iv il W ar.” The solu
tion? A radical overhaul of this agin g technology.
T ype I In sig h t: “The next tim e you’re in a m eeting and folks are dis
cussing how to w rin g another increm ent of performance out of your
workforce, you m ig h t ask: ‘To w hat end, and to whose benefit, are
our em ployees being asked to give of them selves? H ave we com m it
ted ourselves to a purpose that is tru ly deserving of their in itiativ e,
im agin ation , and passion?’ ”
M o re In fo : H am el’s T he F uture o f M anagem ent (w ritten w ith B ill

Breen) is an im portant read. For more on H am el’s ideas and research,
see w w w .garyham el.com .
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The Type I Fitness P l a n :
Four Tips f o r G e t t i n g (and S t a y i n g )
M o t i v a t e d t o Exercise
On th e ja ck et o f th is book is a runner— a n d th a t’s no accident, R un

n in g can h a ve a l l the elem ents o f Type I behavior. I t’s autonom ous. It
a llo w s yo u to seek m astery. A nd the p eople w ho keep a t it, a n d enjoy
it most, often run to w a rd a g rea ter purpose— testin g th eir lim its or
sta y in g h ea lth y a n d vita l. To help you b rin g the sp irit o f in trin sic
m otivation out o f the office a n d classroom a n d in to an other realm o f
y o u r life, here a re fo u r tips f o r sta y in g f t the Type I w ay.
S et y o u r o w n goals. Don’t accept some standardized, cookie-cutter

exercise plan. Create one th at’s tailored ro your needs and fitness
level. (You can work w ith a professional on this, but you m ake the
final calls.) Equally im portant, set the rig h t kinds of goals. A m ple
research in behavioral science shows that people who seek to lose
w eigh t for extrinsic reasons— to slim down for a w edding or to look
better at a class reunion— often reach their goals. And then they gain
the w eigh t back as soon as the target event ends. M eanw hile, people
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who pursue more intrinsic goals— to g e t fit in order to feel good or

to stay healthy for their fam ily— m ake slower progress at first, but
achieve significantly better results in the long term .
D itc h th e tr e a d m ill. Unless you really lik e treadm ills, that is. If
tru d gin g to the gym feels lik e a dreary obligation, find a form of fit
ness you enjoy— that produces those intoxicating moments of flow.
G ather some friends for an informal gam e of tennis or basketball, join
an am ateur league, go for w alks at a local park, dance for a half-hour,
or p lay w ith your kids. Use the Sawyer Effect to your advantage—
and turn your work(out) into play.
K eep m a ste ry in m in d . G etting b etter at som ething provides a

g reat source of renewable energy. So p ick an a ctiv ity in w hich you
can improve over tim e. B y continually increasing the difficulty of
w hat you take on— th in k G oldilocks— and settin g more audacious
challenges for yourself as tim e passes, you can renew that energy and
stay m otivated.
R e w a rd y o u r s e lf th e r ig h t w ay . If yo u’re really stru g g lin g , con

sider a quick experim ent w ith Stickk (w w w .stickk.com ), a w ebsite in
which you p u b licly com m it to a goal and m ust hand over money— to
a friend, a charity, or an “an ti-ch arity”— if you fail to reach it. B ut
in general, don’t bribe yourself w ith “if-then” rewards— lik e “If I
exercise four tim es this w eek, then I’ll buy m yself a new sh irt.” They
can backfire. But the occasional “now th at” reward? N ot a problem .
So if you’ve swum the distance you hoped to this week, there’s no
harm in treatin g yourself to a massage afterward. It w on’t hurt. And
it m ight feel good.
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D r i v e : The Recap
T his book has covered a lot o f gro u n d —a n d you m igh t not be a b le

to in sta n tly reca ll ev eryth in g in it. So here y o u ’l l fi n d three d ifferen t
sum m aries o f Drive. Think o f it as yo u r ta lk in g points, refresher
course, o r m emory jogger.
TW ITTER S U M M A R Y *
Carrots & sticks are so last century. D rive says for 21st century work,
we need to upgrade to autonom y, m astery & purpose.
C O C K T A I L PARTY S U M M A R Y 1
W h en it comes to m otivation, there’s a gap between w hat science

knows and w hat business does. O ur current business operating
*A m ax im u m of 140 characters, as req u ired b y T w itter (see w w w .tw itter.co m ). F eel free to retw eet
this su m m ary or one of yo u r own.
+A m ax im u m of 10 0 w ords, or less th an a m in u te o f ta lk in g .
DRIVE
system — which is b u ilt around external, carrot-and-stick

m otivators— doesn’t work and often does harm. W e need an upgrade.
A nd the science shows the way. This new approach has three essen
tial elem ents: (1) A utonom y— the desire to direct our own lives; (2)
M astery— the urge to get better and better at som ething that m at
ters; and (3) Purpose— the yearning to do w hat we do in the service of
som ething larger than ourselves.
CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER S U M M A R Y
I n t r o d u c t io n : The Pu zzlin g Puzzles

of H a r r y H a rlo w a n d E dward Deci
H um an beings have a biological drive th at includes hunger, thirst,

and sex. W e also have another long-recognized drive: to respond to
rewards and punishm ents in our environm ent. B ut in the m iddle
of the tw entieth century, a few scientists began discovering that
hum ans also have a third drive— w hat some call “intrinsic m otiva
tio n .” For several decades, behavioral scientists have been figuring
out the dynam ics and explaining the power of our third drive. A las,
business hasn’t caught up to this new understanding. If we w ant to
strengthen our companies, elevate our lives, and im prove the world,
we need to close the gap between what science knows and w hat busi
ness does.
204
Drive: T h e Recap
PART O N E . A N E W O P E R A T I N G S Y S T E M
C h a p te r 1. Th e Rise a nd Fall of M oti v a ti o n 2 . 0
Societies, lik e com puters, have operating system s— a set of m ostly

invisible instructions and protocols on w hich everything runs.
The first hum an operating system — call it M otivation 1.0— was
all about survival. Its successor, M otivation 2.0, was b u ilt around
external rewards and punishm ents. T hat worked fine for routine
tw entieth-century tasks. B ut in the tw enty-first century, M otivation
2.0 is proving incom patible w ith how we organize w hat we do, how
we th in k about w hat we do, and how we do w hat we do. W e need
an upgrade.
C h a p te r 2. Seven Reaso ns Carrots

a nd S ti ck s (O ften) D o n ’t W o r k . . .
W hen carrots and sticks encounter our third drive, strange things
begin to happen. T raditional “if-th en ” rewards can give us less of
w hat we want: They can extin guish intrinsic m otivation, dim inish
performance, crush creativity, and crowd out good behavior. They
can also give us more of w hat we don’t w ant: They can encourage
unethical behavior, create addictions, and foster short-term th in k
ing. These are the bugs in our current operating system .
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DRIVE
C h a p te r 2a. . . . a nd th e S pecial C i r c u m s t a n c e s
W h e n T h e y Do
Carrots and sticks aren’t all bad. They can be effective for rule-based
routine tasks— because there’s little in trin sic m otivation to under
m ine and not m uch creativity to crush. A nd they can be more effec
tive s till if those g iv in g such rewards offer a rationale for w hy the
task is necessary, acknowledge that i t ’s boring, and allow people
autonom y over how they complete it. For nonroutine conceptual
tasks, rewards are more perilous— p articu larly those of the “if-then”
variety. B ut “now th at” rewards— noncontingent rewards given
after a task is com plete— can som etim es be okay for more creative,
righ t-b rain work, especially if they provide useful inform ation about
performance.
C h a p te r 3. Type I a nd Type X
M otivation 2.0 depended on and fostered Type X behavior— behavior

fueled more by extrinsic desires than intrinsic ones and concerned less
w ith the inherent satisfaction of an activ ity and more w ith the exter
nal rewards to which an activity leads. M otivation 3 0, the upgrade
th a t’s necessary for the smooth functioning of tw enty-first-century
business, depends on and fosters Type I behavior. Type I behavior
concerns itse lf less w ith the external rewards an a ctiv ity brings and
more w ith the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself. For profes
sional success and personal fulfillm ent, w e need to move ourselves
and our colleagues from Type X to Type I. The good news is that
206
Drive: The Recap
Type I ’s are m ade, not born— and Type I behavior leads to stronger
performance, greater health, and h igh er overall w ell-bein g.
PART TW O . T H E T H R E E E L E M E N T S
C h a p te r 4. A u t o n o m y
Our “default settin g ” is to be autonomous and self-directed.

U nfortunately, circum stances— in clud in g outdated notions of
“m anagem ent”— often conspire to change that default settin g and
turn us from Type I to Type X . To encourage Type I behavior, and
the h igh performance it enables, the first requirem ent is autonomy.
People need autonom y over task (w hat they do), tim e (when they
do it), team (who they do it w ith ), and technique (how they do it).
Companies that offer autonomy, sometim es in radical doses, are out
perform ing th eir com petitors.
C h a p te r 5. M ast ery
W h ile M otivation 2.0 required com pliance, M otivation 3.0 demands

engagem ent. O nly engagem ent can produce m astery— becom ing
better at som ething that m atters. And the pursuit of mastery, an
im portant but often dorm ant part of our third drive, has become
essential to m aking one’s w ay in the economy. M astery begins
w ith “flow”— optim al experiences when the challenges we face are
exquisitely m atched to our ab ilities. Sm art workplaces therefore
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DRIVE
supplem ent day-to-day activities w ith “G oldilocks tasks”— not too

hard and not too easy. B ut m astery also abides by three peculiar rules.
M astery is a m indset: It requires the capacity to see your ab ilities not
as finite, but as infinitely im provable. M astery is a pain: It demands
effort, g rit, and deliberate practice. And m astery is an asym ptote: I t’s
im possible to fully realize, w hich makes it sim ultaneously frustrat
ing and allu rin g.
C h a p te r 6. P urp o s e
H um ans, by their nature, seek purpose— a cause greater and more

enduring than them selves. B ut traditional businesses have long con
sidered purpose ornam ental— a perfectly nice accessory, so long as it
d id n ’t get in the w ay of the im portant th ings. B ut th at’s changing—
thanks in part to the risin g tide of agin g baby boomers reckoning
w ith their own m ortality. In M otivation 3.0, purpose m axim ization
is takin g its place alongside profit m axim ization as an aspiration
and a g u id in g principle. W ith in organizations, this new “purpose
m otive” is expressing itse lf in three ways: in goals that use profit to
reach purpose; in words th at emphasize more than self-interest; and
in policies that allow people to pursue purpose on th eir own terms.
This move to accompany profit m axim ization w ith purpose m axim i
zation has the potential to rejuvenate our businesses and rem ake our
world.
208
D r i v e : The Gl ossary
A n ew approach to m otivation requires a n ew voca bu lary f o r ta lk in g

abou t it. H ere’s y o u r o fficia l Drive dictionary.
B a se lin e re w a rd s : Salary, contract paym ents, benefits, and a few

perks that represent the floor for compensation. If someone’s base
line rewards aren’t adequate or equitab le, her focus w ill be on the
unfairness of her situation or the anxiety of her circum stance, m ak
in g m otivation of any sort extrem ely difficult.
FedE x D ays: Created by the A ustralian software company A tlas

sian, these one-day bursts of autonom y allow em ployees to tackle
any problem they w ant— and then show the results to the rest of the
com pany at the end of tw enty-four hours. W h y the name? Because
you have to deliver som ething overnight.
G oldilocks tasks: The sweet spot where tasks are neither too easy nor too
hard. Essential to reaching the state of “flow” and to achieving mastery.
DRIVE
“I f-th e n ” re w a rd s : Rewards offered as contingencies— as in, “If you

do this, then you’ll g et th at.” For routine tasks, “if-th en ” rewards can
som etim es be effective. For creative, conceptual tasks, they in vari
ab ly do more harm than good.
M a ste ry a sym p to te: The know ledge that full m astery can never be
realized, w hich is w hat makes its pursuit sim ultaneously allu rin g
and frustrating.
M o tiv a tio n 1.0, 2 .0 , a n d 3.0: The m otivational operating system s,

or sets of assum ptions and protocols about how the w orld works and
how humans behave, th at run beneath our laws, economic arrange
m ents, and business practices. M otivation 1.0 presum ed that humans
were biological creatures, stru g g lin g for survival. M otivation 2.0
presum ed th at humans also responded to rewards and punishm ents
in their environm ent. M otivation 3.0, the upgrade we now need,
presumes th at hum ans also have a third drive— to learn, to create,
and to better the world.
N o n ro u tin e w o rk : Creative, conceptual, righ t-b rain work that

can’t be reduced to a set of rules. Today, if you’re not doing this sort
of w ork, you won’t be doing w hat you’re doing m uch longer.
“N o w th a t” re w a rd s : Rewards offered after a task has been com

pleted— as in “Now that you’ve done such a great job, le t’s acknow l
edge the achievem ent.” “Now th at” rewards, w hile tricky, are less
perilous for nonroutine tasks than “if-then” rewards.
R e s u lts -o n ly w o rk en v iro n m e n t (RO W E): The brainchild of two

A m erican consultants, a RO W E is a workplace in w hich employees
210
Drive: The Gl ossary
don’t have schedules. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain

tim e or any tim e. They just have to get their work done.
R o u tin e w o rk : W ork that can be reduced to a script, a spec sheet, a

form ula, or a set of instructions. External rewards can be effective in
m o tivating routine tasks. B ut because such algo rithm ic, rule-based,
left-brain w ork has become easier to send offshore and to autom ate,
this type of w ork has become less valuable and less im portant in
advanced economies.
S a w y e r E ffect: A w eird behavioral alchem y inspired by the scene

in T he A dventures o f Tom S a w yer in w hich Tom and friends w h ite
wash A unt P o lly’s fence. This effect has two aspects. The negative:
Rewards can turn play into work. The positive: Focusing on m astery
can turn work into play.
20 p e rc e n t tim e : An in itiativ e in place at a few companies in which

em ployees can spend 20 percent of their tim e w orking on any project
they choose.
T ype I b e h a v io r: A w ay of th in k in g and an approach to life b u ilt

around in trin sic, rather than extrinsic, m otivators. It is powered
by our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new
th ings, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
T ype X b e h a v io r: Behavior that is fueled more by extrinsic desires

than intrinsic ones and that concerns itself less w ith the inherent sat
isfaction of an activity and more w ith the external rewards to which
that activ ity leads.
211
The D ri v e Di scussi on G ui d e:
T w e n t y C o n v e r s a t i o n S t a r t e r s to
Keep You T h i n k i n g and Tal ki ng
These d a ys authors m igh t g e t the fir st w ord. B u t th ey d o n ’t— a n d

sh ou ld n ’t— g e t the la st word. T h a t’s y o u r job. So n ow th a t y o u ’ve
rea d th is book, go out a n d la u d or la sh it on y o u r b log or y o u r fa v o r ite
so cia l netw ork ing site. B u t i f y o u w a n t to make the id eas in Drive
tru ly come to life, talk them over in person— w ith som e colleagues
fro m work, fr ien d s a t school, or y o u r book club. T h a t’s h o w th e w o rld
chan ges— conversation by conversation. H ere a re tw en ty questions to
g e t y o u r conversation goin g.
1. Has Pink persuaded you about the gap between what

science knows and w hat organizations do? Do you
agree that we need to upgrade our m otivational oper
atin g system ? W h y or w hy not?
2. How has M otivation 2.0 affected your experiences at
school, at work, or in fam ily life? If M otivation 3.0
had been the prevailing ethic when you were young,
how would your experiences have differed?
The Drive Discussion Guide
3. Do you consider yourself more Type I or Type X?

W h y? T hink of three people in your life (whether at
home, w ork, or school). Are they more Type I or Type
X ? W h at leads you to your conclusions?
4. Describe a tim e when you’ve seen one of the seven
deadly flaws of carrots and sticks in action. W h at les
sons m ig h t you and others learn from that experience?
Have you seen instances when carrots and sticks have
been effective?
5. How w ell is your current job m eeting your need for
“baseline rew ards”— salary, benefits, a few perks? If i t ’s
fallin g short, w hat changes can you or your organiza
tion make?
6 . P in k draws a distinction between “routine” work and
“nonroutine” work. How m uch of your own work is
routine? How m uch is nonroutine?
7. If you’re a boss, how m ig h t you replace “if-then”
rewards w ith a more autonomous environm ent and
the occasional “now th at” reward?
8 . As you th in k about your own best work, w hat aspect
of autonom y has been m ost im portant to you? A uton
om y over w hat you do (task), when you do it (tim e),
how you do it (technique), or w ith whom you do it
(team )? W h y? How m uch autonom y do you have at
work rig h t now? Is that enough?
9. W ould in itiatives lik e FedEx Days, 20 percent tim e,
and RO W E w ork in your organization? W h y or w hy
not? W h at are one or two other ideas that w ould bring
out more Type I behavior in your workplace?
10. Describe a tim e recently when you’ve experienced
“flow.” W h at were you doing? W here were you? How
213
DRIVE
m ig h t you tw eak your current role to bring on more of

these optim al experiences?
11. Is there an yth in g you’ve ever w anted to m aster that
you’ve avoided for reasons lik e “I’m too o ld ” or “I’ll
never be good at th a t” or “It w ould be a waste of tim e”?
W h at are the barriers to g iv in g it a try? H ow can you
remove those barriers?
12. Are you in a position to delegate any of the tasks that
m ig h t be holding you back from more challen gin g
pursuits? How m ig h t you hand off these tasks in a way
that does not take aw ay your colleagues’ autonom y?
13. How w ould you redesign your office, your classroom,
or your home— the physical environm ent, the pro
cesses, the rules— to promote greater engagem ent and
m astery by everyone?
14. W h en tacklin g the routine tasks your job requires,
w hat strategies can you come up w ith to trig g er the
positive side of the Sawyer Effect?
15. D rive talks a lot about purpose— both for organiza
tions and individuals. Does your organization have a
purpose? W h at is it? If your organization is for-profit,
is purpose even a realistic goal given the com petitive
pressures in every industry?
16. Are you— in your paid work, fam ily life, or volun
teering— on a path toward purpose? W h at is that
purpose?
17. Is education today too Type X — that is, does it put
too great an em phasis on extrinsic rewards? If so, how
should we reconfigure schools and classrooms? Is there
an elegant w ay to reconcile intrinsic m otivation and
accountability?
214
The Drive Discussion Guide
18. If you’re a mom or dad, does your home environm ent

promote more Type I or Type X behavior in your child
or children? H ow? W h at, if an yth in g, should you do
about it?
19- Does P in k underplay the im portance of earning a liv
ing? Is his view of M otivation 3.0 a b it too utopian—
that is, is P ink, if you’ll pardon the pun, too rosy?
20. W h at are the th ings th at tru ly m otivate you? Now
th in k about the last w eek. How m any of those 168
hours were devoted to these things? Can you do
better?
Your own questions:
215
I
FIND OUT M ORE—
A B O U T Y O U R S E L F A N D T H IS TOPIC
Are you Type I or Type X?
Take the comprehensive, free online assessment at

www.danpink.com/drive.html
In te re s te d in re g u la r upd ates on the scie n c e

a n d p ra c tic e o f h um an m o tiv a tio n ?
Subscribe to Drive Times, a free quarterly e-mail

newsletter at
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
And now a tip of the h at to those who kept m e m otivated.

A t Riverhead Books, Ja k e M orrissey’s skills as an editor were
m atched only by his talents as a therapist. He made this a better
book w ithout m aking its author a crazier person. Thanks also to
Geoff Kloske, who threw his support behind this project early and
en th usiastically— and to R iverhead’s extraordinary production team
for th eir sk ill and patience.
Rafe Sagalyn understood the prom ise of this book even before I
did and cham pioned it w ith his usual deft touch. I’m grateful to have
him as a literary agent and a friend. A huge shout-out as w ell to the
talented B rid get W agner, who has spread the word about D rive to
publishers around the world.
Vanessa Carr did a terrific job of finding obscure social psychol
ogy studies in the crevices of the Internet and on the dusty shelves
Acknowledgments
of university libraries. Rob Ten Pas once again used his consider
able talents to craft pictures to enliven m y less considerable words.
Sarah Rainone provided spectacular help pushing the project over
the finish lin e durin g a hot and dreary sum mer. R em em ber all three
of those names, folks. T h ey’re stars.
One of the joys of w orking on this book was having a few long
conversations and interview s w ith M ike C sikszen tm ih alyi, Ed Deci,
and Rich R yan, who have long been heroes of m ine. If there were any
justice in the w orld, all three would w in a Nobel Prize— and if that
justice had a slig h t sense of humor, the prize w ould be in econom
ics. A ny errors or m isinterpretations of th eir work are m y fault, not
theirs.
I t’s about at this point that authors who are parents apologize to
th eir children for m issed dinners. Not m e. I don’t m iss m eals. B ut
I did skip nearly everything else for several months and that forced
the am azing P in k kids— Sophia, Eliza, and Saul, to whom D rive is
dedicated— into a dad-less existence for a w hile. Sorry, guys. Fortu
nately, as you’ve no doubt already discovered, I need you a lot more
than you need me.
Then there’s the threesom e’s mom, Jessica Anne Lerner. As alw ays,
Jessica was the first, last, and most honest sounding board for every
idea I spit out. And as alw ays, Jessica read every word I wrote—
in clud in g m any thousands of them aloud w hile I sat in a red chair
crin g in g at their sound. For these sm all reasons, and m any larger
ones that are none of your business, this gorgeous, graceful woman
leaves me slack-jaw ed— in awe and in love.
220
NOTES
IN TRODUCTION : THE PUZZLIN G PUZZLES OF H A R R Y H A R L O W

AN D E D W AR D DECI
1. Harry F. Harlow, Margaret Kuenne Harlow, and Donald R. Meyer, “Learning M oti
vated by a Manipulation D rive,”Jo u rn al o f Experimental Psychology 40 (1950): 2 31.
2. Ibid., 2 3 3 -3 4 .
3- Harry F. Harlow, “Motivation as a Factor in the Acquisition o f New Responses,”
in Current Theory and Research on Motivation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1953), 46.
4. Harlow, in some ways, became part o f the establishment. He won a National Sci
ence Medal and became president o f the American Psychological Association. For
more about Harlow’s interesting life, see Deborah Blum, Love a t Goon P ark: Harry
Harlow and the Science of Affection (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2002), and Jim Otta-
viani and Dylan Meconis, Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science o f Love (Ann
Arbor, Mich.: G. T. Labs, 2007).
5. Edward L. Deci, “Effects o f Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic M otivation,”
Jo u rn al o f Personality and Social Psychology 1 8 ( 1 9 7 1 ) : 114.
6. Edward L. Deci, “Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Reinforcement, and Inequity,”
Jo u rn al of Personality and Social Psychology 22 (1972): 1 1 9 —20.
Notes
CH APTER 1. THE RISE AN D FALL OF MOTIVATION 2 .0
1. “Important Notice: MSN Encarta to Be Discontinued,” Microsoft press release

(March 30, 2009); Ina Fried, “Microsoft Closing the Book on Encarta,” CNET
News, March 30, 2 009; “Microsoft to Shut Encarta as Free Sites A lter M arket,”
W all Street Jo u rn al, March 3 1, 2009. Up-to-date Wikipedia data are available at
http://en.wikipedia.0 rg/wiki/Wikipedia:Ab0 u t.
2. Karim R. Lakhani and Robert G. W olf, “W h y Hackers Do W hat They Do: Under
standing Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects,” in Perspec
tives on Free an d Open Software, edited by J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, and K.
Lakhani (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 3, 12.
3. Jurgen Blitzer, Wolfram Schrettl, and Philipp J. H. Schroeder, “Intrinsic Motiva
tion in Open Source Software Development,” Jo u rn al o f Comparative Economics 35
(2007): 1 7 ,4 .
4. “Vermont Governor Expected to Sign Bill on Charity-Business Hybrid,” Chronicle
of Philanthropy, News Updates, A pril 2 1, 2008.
5. Muhammad Yunus, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future
o f Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 23; Aspen Institute, Fourth Sec
tor Concept Paper (Fall 2008); “B Corporation,” M IT Sloan Management Review,
December 11 , 2 008, and http://www.bcorporarion.net/declaration.
6. Stephanie Strom, “Businesses Try to Make Money and Save the W orld,” New York
Times, May 6, 2007.
7. Colin Camerer, “Behavioral Economics: Reunifying Psychology and Economics,”
Proceedings of the N ational Academy of Sciences 9 6 (September 1999): 10576.
8. Bruno S. Frey, Not Ju st fo r the Money: A n Economic Theory o f Personal Motivation
(Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1997), 1 1 8 - 1 9 , ix. See also Bruno S. Frey and Alois
Stutzer, Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Well-Being
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
9. Bradford C. Johnson, James M. Manyika, and Lareina A. Yee, “The Next Revolu
tion in Interaction,” McKinsey Quarterly 4 (2005): 2 5 - 2 6 .
10 . Careful readers might remember that I wrote about this general topic in A Whole
New Mind: Why Right-Brainers W ill Rule the Future (New York: Riverhead Books,
2006). Look for it at your local library. It’s not bad.
11. Teresa M. Amabile, Creativity in Context (Boulder, Colo.: W estview Press, 1996),
119- AmabiLe also says that, used properly and carefully, extrinsic motivators can
be conducive to creativity— a point I’ll examine more in Chapter 2.
12. Telework Trendlines 2 009, data collected by the Dieringer Research Group, pub
lished by W orld atWork, February 2009.
222
Notes
CHAPTER 2. SEVEN REASONS CARR O TS A N D STICKS (OFTEN)

D O N ’T W O R K . . .
1. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 23.
2. Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Robert Nisbett, “Undermining Children’s Intrin
sic Interest with Extrinsic Rewards: A Test of the ‘Overjustification’ Hypothesis,”
Jo u rn al of Personality and Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (1973): 12 9 —37.
3- Edward L. Deci, Richard M. Ryan, and Richard Koestner, “A Meta-Analytic
Review of Experiments Examining the Effects o f Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic
Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 6 (1999): 659-
4. Jonmarshall Reeve, Understanding Motivation and Emotion, 4th ed. (Hoboken, N.J.:
John W iley & Sons, 2005), 143.
5. Dan Ariely, Uri Gneezy, George Lowenstein, and Nina Mazar, “Large Stakes and
Big Mistakes,” Federal Reserve Bank o f Boston Working Paper No. 0 5 - 1 1 , Ju ly 23,
2 00 5 (emphasis added). You can also find a very short summary of this and some
other research in Dan Ariely, “W h at’s the Value of a Big Bonus?” New York Times,
November 20, 2008,
6. “LSE: W hen Performance-Related Pay Backfires,” Financial, Ju n e 25, 2009.
7. Sam Glucksberg, “The Influence o f Streng th o f Drive on Functional Fixedness
and Perceptual Recognition,”Jou rn al of Experimental Psychology 63 (1962): 36—4 1.
Glucksberg obtained similar results in his “Problem Solving: Response Competi
tion Under the Influence of Drive,” Psychological Reports 15 (1964).
8. Teresa M. Amabile, Elise Phillips, and Mary Ann Collins, “Person and Environ
ment in Talent Development: The Case of Creativity,” in Talent Development: Pro
ceedings from the 1 9 9 3 Henry B. and Jocelyn Wallace N ational Research Symposium on
Talent Development, edited by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan G. Assouline, and DeAnn
L. Ambroson (Dayton: Ohio Psychology Press, 1993), 2 7 3 -7 4 .
9- Jean Kathryn Carney, “Intrinsic Motivation and Artistic Success” (unpublished
dissertation, 19 8 6, University of Chicago); J. W. Getzels and Mihaly Csikszent
mihalyi, The Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study o f Problem-Finding in A r t (New
York: Wiley, 1976).
10. Teresa M. Amabile, Creativity in Context (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996),
1 1 9 ; James C. Kaufman and Robert J. Sternberg, eds., The International Handbook of
Creativity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 18.
11. Richard Titmuss, The G ift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, edited
by Ann Oakley and John Ashton, expanded and updated edition (New York: New
Press, 1997).
223
Notes
12. Carl Mellstrom and Magnus Johannesson, “Crowding Out in Blood Donation:
Was Titmuss R ig h t?” Jo u rn al o f the European Economic Association 6, no. 4 (June
2008): 8 4 5 -6 3 .
13. Other research has found that monetary incentives are especially counterproduc
tive when the charitable act is public. See Dan Ariely, Anat Bracha, and Stephan
Meier, “Doing Good or Doing W ell? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives
in Behaving Prosocially," Federal Reserve Bank o f Boston Working Paper No. 0 7 - 9 ,
August 2007.
14. Bruno S. Frey No/ Ju st fo r the Money: A n Economic Theory o f Personal Motivation
(Brookfield,Vt.:EdwardElgar, 1997),84.
15. Nicola Lacetera and Mario Macias, “Motivating Altruism: A Field Study,” Institute
fo r the Study o f Labor Discussion Paper No. 3 7 7 0 , October 28, 2 008.
16. Lisa D. Ordonez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Braver-
man, “Goals Gone W ild: The Systematic Side Effects o f Over-Prescribing Goal
Setting,” H arvard Business School Working Paper No. 0 9 - 0 8 3 , February 2009-
17. Peter Applebome, “W hen Grades Are Fixed in College-Entrance Derby,” New York
Times, March 7 , 2009.
18. Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,” Jo u rn al o f Legal Studies 29
(January 2000).
19. Gneezy and Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,” 3, 7 (emphasis added).
20. Anton Suvorov, “Addiction to Rewards,” presentation delivered at the European
W inter Meeting o f the Econometric Society, October 25, 2003.
2 1. Brian Knutson, Charles M. Adams, Grace W. Fong, and Daniel Hommer, “Antici
pation o f Increasing Monetary Reward Selectively Recruits Nucleus Accumbens,”
Jo u rn al o f Neuroscience 21 (2001).
22. Camelia M. Kuhnen and Brian Knutson, “The Neural Basis o f Financial Risk Tak
ing,” Neuron 47 (September 2005): 768.
23. Mei Cheng, K. R. Subramanyam, and Yuan Zhang, “Earnings Guidance and
Mana-gerial Myopia,” SSRN Working Paper No. 8 5 4 5 1 5 , November 2005.
24. Lisa D. Ordonez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Braver-
man, “Goals Gone W ild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal
Setting,” H arvard Business School Working Paper No. 0 9 - 0 8 3 , February 2009.
25. Roland Benabou and J e m Tirole, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic M otivation,” Review o f
Economic Studies 70 (2003)-
224
Notes
CH APTER 2 A AN D THE SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

W H EN THEY DO
1. Edward L. Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard M. Ryan, “Extrinsic Rewards and
Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again,” Review o f Educa
tional Research 7 1, по. 1 (Spring 2 00 1): 14.
2. Dan Ariely, “W h a t’s the Value of a Big Bonus?” New York Times, November 20,
2008.
3- Teresa M. Amabile, Creativity in Context (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 175.
4. Deci, Ryan, and Koestner, “Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education.”
5. Amabile, Creativity in Context, 117 .
6. Deci, Ryan, and Koestner, “Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in
Education.”
7. Amabile, Creativity in Context , 119-
CHAPTER 3. TYPE I A N D TYPE X
1. Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “Self-Determination Theory and the Facili
tation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and W ell-Being,” American
Psychologist 55 (January 2000): 68.
2. Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman, Type A Behavior an d Your Heart (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 4.
3. Ibid., 70.
4. Douglas McGregor, The Human Side o f Enterprise: 2 5th Anniversary Printing (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), 3 3 -3 4 .
5- Ryan and Deci, “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation o f Intrinsic M oti
vation, Social Development, and W ell-Being.”
CHAPTER 4. A U T O N O M Y
1. Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, “Facilitating Optimal Motivation and

Psychological W ell-Being Across Life’s Domains,” Canadian Psychology 4 9, no. 1
(February 2008): 14.
2. Valery Chirkov, Richard M. Ryan, Youngmee Kim , and Ulas Kaplan, “Differen
tiating A u ton om y from Individualism and Independence: A Self-Determination
Theory Perspective on Internalization of Cultural Orientations and W ell-Being,”
Jo u rn al o f Personality and Social Psychology 8 4 (January 2003); Joe Devine, Laura
Camfield, and Ian Gough, “Autonomy or Dependence— or Both?: Perspectives
from Bangladesh,"Journal o f Happiness Studies 9, no. 1 (January 2008).
225
Notes
3. Deci and Ryan, “Facilitating Optimal Motivation and Psychological Well-Being

Across Life’s Domains,” citing many other studies.
4. Paul P. Baard, Edward L. Deci, and Richard M. Ryan, “Intrinsic Need Satisfaction:
A Motivational Basis of Performance and Well-Being in Two W ork Settings, "Jour
nal o f Applied Social Psychology 34 (2004).
5. Francis Green, Demanding Work: The Paradox o f Job Quality in the Affluent Economy
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006).
6. “Atlassian’s 20% Time Experiment,” Atlassian Developer Blog, post by Mike
Cannon-Brookes, March 10, 2008.
7. Quoted in H arvard Business Essentials: Managing Creativity an d Innovation (Boston:
Harvard Business School Press, 2003), 109-
8. The observation comes from former 3M executive Bill Coyne, quoted in Ben Cas-
nocha, “Success on the Side,” The American: The Jo u rn al o f the American Enterprise
Institute , A pril 2009- A nice account of 3M ’s practices appears in James C. Collins
and Jerry L. Porras, B uilt to Last: Successful Habits o f Visionary Companies (New York:
HarperBusiness, 2004).
9- Erin Hayes, “Google’s 20 Percent Factor,” A B C News, May 12, 2008.
10. V. Dion Hayes, “W hat Nurses W ant,’’ Washington Post, September 13, 2008.
1 1 . Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your
Potential fo r Lasting Fulfillment (New York: Free Press, 2004), 17 8 ; Paul R. Verkuil,
Martin Seligman, and Terry Kang, “Countering Lawyer Unhappiness: Pessimism,
Decision Latitude and the Zero-Sum Dilemma at Cardozo Law School,” Public
Research Paper No. 19, September 2000.
12. Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, “Understanding the Negative Effects
o f Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test o f Self-Determination
Theory,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33 (June 2007).
13- W illiam H. Rehnquist, The Legal Profession Today, 62 Ind. L.J. 1 5 1 , 153 (1987).
14. Jonathan D. Glater, “Economy Pinches the Billable Hour at Law Firms,” New York
Times, January 19, 2009.
15. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, Why Work Sucks and How to F ix It (New York:
Portfolio, 2008).
16. Tamara J. Erickson, “Task, Not Time: Profile of a Gen Y Job ,” H arvard Business
Review (February 2008): 19.
17. Diane Brady and Jena McGregor, “Customer Service Champs,” BusinessWeek, March
2, 2009-
18. Martha Frase-Blunt, “Call Centers Come Home," HR Magazine 52 (January 2007):
84; Ann Bednarz, “Call Centers Are Heading for Home,” Network World , January
30, 2006.
226
Notes
19- Paul Restuccia, “W hat W ill Jobs of the Future Be? Creativity, Self-Direction Val
ued,” Boston Herald , February 12, 2 00 7 . Gary Hamel, The Future o f Management
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007).
20. Bharat Mediratta, as told to Julie Bick, “The Google Way: Give Engineers Room,”
New York Times, October 2 1 , 2007.
21. See, for example, S. Parker, T. W all, and P. Hackson, “That’s Not My Job: Devel
oping Flexible Employee W ork Orientations,” Academy o f Management Jo u rn al 40
(1997): 8 9 9 -9 2 9 .
22. Marylene Gagne and Edward L. Deci, “Self-Determination Theory and W ork Moti
vation, "Journal o f Organizational Behavior 26 (2005): 3 3 1—62.
CHAPTER 5. MASTERY
1. Jack Zenger, Joe Folkman, and Scott Edinger, “How Extraordinary Leaders Double
Profits,” C hief Learning Officer, Ju ly 2009.
2. R ik Kirkland, ed., W hat M atters? Ten Questions That W ill Shape Our Future (McKin-
sey Management Institute, 2009), 80.
3. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work
an d P lay, 25th anniversary edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), xix.
4. Ann March, “The A rt o f W ork,” Fast Company, August 2005.
5. This account comes from both an interview with Csikszentmihalyi, March 3, 2009,
and from March, “The A rt o f W ork.”
6. Henry Sauerman and Wesley Cohen, “W hat Makes Them Tick? Employee Motives
and Firm Innovation,” NBER Working Paper No. 1 4 4 4 3 , October 2008.
7. Am y Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as
Active Crafters o f Their W ork,” Academy o f Management Review 26 (2001): 18 1.
8. Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development
(Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 1999), 17.
9. Ibid.
10. Angela L. Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis R.
Kelly, “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals "Journal o f Personality
and Social Psychology 92 (January 2007): 1087.
1 1 . K . Anders Ericsson, R alf T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch Romer, “The Role of
Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review
10 0 (December 1992): 363.
12. For two excellent popular accounts o f some of this research, see Geoff Colvin, Tal
ented Is Overrated: W hat Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
(New York: Portfolio, 2008), and Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story o f Success
227
Notes
'{New York: Little, Brown, 2008). Both books are recommended in the Type I
Toolkit.
13- Daniel F. Chambliss, “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on
Stratification and Olympic Swimmers,” Sociological Theory 1 (1989).
14. Duckworth et al., “G rit.”
15. Dweck, Self-Theories, 4 1.
16. Clyde Haberman, “David Halberscam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies,” New York
Times, A pril 24, 2007.
17. The passage is quoted in David Galenson, Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns o f Cre
ativity in Modern A r t (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 53. See
also Daniel H. Pink, “W hat Kind o f Genius Are You?” Wired 14.07 (July 2006).
18. This study is explained in detail in Chapters 10 and 11 of Csikszentmihalyi’s Beyond
Boredom and Anxiety , which is the source of all quotations here.
19. Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety , 190.
CH APTER 6. PURPOSE
1. United Nations Statistics Division, Gender Info 2 0 0 7 , Table 3a (2007).

2. “Oldest Boomers Turn 6 0 ,” U.S. Census Bureau Facts for Features, No.
CB06-FFSE.01-2 January3,2006.
3. Gary Hamel, “Moon Shots for Management,” H arvard Business Review , February
2009): p. 9 1.
4. Sylvia Hewlett, “The ‘Me’ Generation Gives W ay to the ‘W e ’ Generation,” Finan
cial Times, June 19, 2009.
5. Marjorie Kelly, “Not Just for Profi t,” strategy +business 54 (Spring 2009): 5.
6. K elly Holland, “Is It Time to Re-Train В-Schools?” New York Times, March 14,
2 00 9 ; Katharine Mangan, “Survey Finds Widespread Cheating in M.B.A. Pro
grams,” Chronicle o f Higher Education, September 19, 2006.
7. See the MBA Oath website, http://mbaoath.org/about/history.
8. Hamel, “Moon Shots for Management,” p. 93.
9. Full disclosure: I worked for Reich for a few years in the early 1990s. You can read
a short account of this idea at Robert B. Reich, “The ‘Pronoun Test’ for Success,”
Washington Post, Ju ly 28, 1993.
10. “Evaluating Your Business Ethics: A Harvard Professor Explains W h y Good People
Do Unethical Things,” G allup Management Jou rn al (June 12, 2008). Available at
http://gmj.gallup.com/content/107527/evaluating-your-business-ethics.aspx.
228
Notes
11 . Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Ankin, and Michael I. Norton, “Spending Money on

Others Promotes Happiness,” Science 2 1 (March 2008).
12. Drake Bennett, “Happiness: A Buyer’s Guide,” Boston Globe, August 23, 2009.
13. Tait Shanafelt et al., “Career Fit and Burnout Among Academic Faculty,” Archives
of Internal Medicine 16 9 , no. 10 (May 2009): 9 90 —95.
14. Christopher P. Niemiec, Richard M. Ryan, and Edward L. Deci, “The Path Taken:
Consequences of Attaining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations,”Jo u rn al o f Research
in Personality 43 (2009): 2 9 1 —306.
15. Ibid.
229
INDEX
Page numbers set in italics indicate illustrations.
Accountability, 1 0 6 -7 Amabile, Teresa, 30, 7 3, 168; and

Achievement, 58, 190; beliefs and, 120; algorithmic tasks, 46; and
goals and, 1 2 1 —22; individual, creativity, 4 4 —45, 65, 67, 1 1 6
15 5 -5 6 ; intrinsic motivation The Amateurs: The Story o f Four Young Men
and, 79; mastery and, 12 7 ; and Their Quest fo r an Olympic
purpose and, 144 G old Medal, Halberstam, 191
Adams, Scott, 99 Anderson, Brad, 100
Addiction, extrinsic rewards and, 5 3 -5 6 Anderson, Max, 138
The Adventures o f Torn Sawyer , Twain, Anderson, Ray, 78n
3 6 -3 7 , 2 11 Anxiety, profit goals and, 14 3 —44
Adversity, responses to, 12 2 —23 Apache, 22
Affirmative action, ethics and, 140 Ariely, Dan, 40, 4 1 , 62; Predictably
Akerlof, George, 172 Irrational, 2 7
Aknin, Lara, 14 1 Art, autonomy and, 106
Algorithmic tasks, 29—30; extrinsic Artists: and mastery, 12 6 —27;
rewards and, 46 motivations, 4 5, 65
Allowances, for children, 17 7 —78 Aspirations of college graduates, 1 4 2 -4 4
Alpine Access, 103 Asymptote, mastery as, 12 6 —27, 208,
Altruism , rewards and, 48 —49 210
Index
Atlassian, 9 2 - 9 4 , 9 6 - 9 7 , 105, 176 Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing

Auden, W. H„ 109, 115 Flow in Work an d Play,
Australia, software company, 92 —94 Csikszentmihalyi, 119 , 187
Autonomous motivation, 9 0 -9 1 Bharat, Krishna, 96
Autonomy, 207; business management Big Picture Learning, 18 0 —81
and, 85—108; child’s allowances Billable hours, 9 9 - 1 0 0
and, 177; in child’s homework, Biological drives, 3, 18
175; contingent rewards and, 38; Blood donors, motivation, 4 7 -4 9
control and, 110 ; and creativity, Boston Globe, 141
66; and motivation, 64; need for, Brain, response to rewards, 55
72, 73; in organizations, 162—65; Breen, Bill, The Future o f Management, 200
and performance, 133; and Bucheit, Paul, 96
purpose, 140, 14 1; ROWE and, Buffett, Warren, 78n
199; Type I behavior and, 80, 201 B uilt to Last , Collins and Porras, 198
Autotelic experiences, 1 1 3 —14; work Business management: and autonomy,
and, 12 9 -3 0 . See also “Flow” 8 5 - 1 0 8 ; goals of, 13 8 -3 9 ;
McGregor’s approaches to,
Baard, Paul, 91 1 9 5 —96; premises of, 76;
Baby-boom generation, 1 3 1 - 3 3 ; and problems of, 7 2; as technology,
purpose, 13 4 , 144^45, 208 8 8 - 8 9 , 200
Baseline rewards, 35, 60, 66, 209 Business model, open source, 2 1 —23, 25
Bazerman, Max, 13 9 —40 Business organizations, 23—24;
В Corporations, 25, 13 6 management of, 76; and
Becker, Gary, 11 6 motivation, 9; policies of,
Behavior: good, rewards and, 4 7 —49; 13 9 —4 1; and purpose, 13 4 ; Type
motivations for, 2—3; negative I toolkit for, 16 2 —73. See also
consequences, 5 2 -5 3 ; types A Business management
and B, 75; types I and X , 7 7 - 8 1
— unethical, 56, 139, extrinsic Cadet Basic Training, 12 3 —24
motivation and, 5 0 - 5 1 . See also Call centers, 1 0 1 - 4
Type I behavior; Type X behavior Candle problem, 4 2 - 4 4 , 4 2 , 4 3 , 56,
Behavioral economics, 2 6 -2 8 6 1 - 6 2 ,6 7
Behavioral science: self-determination Cannon-Brookes, Mike, 9 2 - 9 4 , 9 6 -9 7
theory, 7 1 - 7 4 ; work categories, Carrot-and-stick. See Punishment;
29 Rewards
Beliefs, and achievements, 120 Carse, James P., Finite and Infinite Games:
Benabou, Roland, 73 A Vision o f Life as P lay and
Best Buy, 10 0 —10 1 Possibility , 1 8 5 -8 6
232
Index
Casinos, 55—56 motivations and, 30; rewards

Cezanne, Paul, 12 6 —27 and, 4 2 —4 6 , 6 5 —68
Challenges, 16 9 , as opportunities, 188 Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of
Chambliss, Daniel, 12 4 —25 Discovery and Invention,
Charitable acts, monetary incentives and, Csikszentmihalyi, 187
2 2 4 n l3 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 31, 73,
Charitable giving, as corporate policy, 141 1 0 9 - 1 0 , 1 1 2 - 1 6 , 1 2 8 - 3 0 , 143;
Chen, Jenova, 1 1 8 Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, 119 ;
Children: chores for, 17 7 -7 8 ; and “flow” Creativity, 187; Finding Flow:
state, 130; motivation of, 17 4 —84 The Psychology of Engagement with
Coe, Sebastian, 1 1 4 Everyday Life , 187; Flow: The
Collins, Jim , 19 8 ; and Drucker, Peter F., Psychology of Optimal Experience,
1 9 6 -9 7 ; Good to Great, 198 1 8 6 -8 7 ; Good Work: When
Colvin, Geoff, Talent Is Overrated: What Excellence and Ethics Meet, 189;
Really Separates World-Class measurement of “flow,” 153—54;
Performers from Everybody Else, 18 6 and purpose, 134
Commissioned art, 4 5, 65 Customer service representatives, 1 0 1 —4
Compensation, motivational, 17 0 —73
Competence, need for, 72 The D aily Drucker, Drucker, 197
Competing fo r the Future, Hamel, 200 Damon, W illiam , Good Work: When
Competition, within groups, 168 Excellence and Ethics Meet, 18 9
Complexity o f work, 29 Deci, Edward L., 3 1, 39, 7 0 - 7 2 , 80,
Compliance, 112 ; Motivation 2.0 and, 111 14 2 —43» 17 0 ; and autonomy,
Computers, 17; and intellectual labor, 30 89 —90, 9 1; and extrinsic
Conduct, code of, and purpose, 138 aspirations, 1 4 2 -4 3 ; and
Contingent rewards, 38—39, 4 2 ; and intrinsic motivation, 8 —9< 62,
creativity, 44—45. See also 6 6 -6 7 , 1 0 Intrinsic Motivation,
“If-then” rewards 7 1; Soma puzzle study, 5 -9 ,
Control: autonomy and, 1 1 0 ; bosses 35; Why We Do W hat We Do:
and 16 5 —66; management and, Understanding Self-Motivation, 187
8 8 -9 2 Decision latitude, 98
Controlled motivation, 90 Decision-making, rewards and, 55
Conversation starters, 2 12 —15 Deliberate practice, 15 8 -5 9 , 186; mastery
Cooperatives, 13 6 —37 and, 208
Cornell University, autonomy study, 91 Discussion guide, 2 1 2 —15
Cowell, Simon, 78n Disutility, work as, 31
Creativity, 1 16; extrinsic motivators and, DIY (do it yourself) report cards, 177
17 0 , 2 2 2 n l l; freedom in, 90; Dopamine, rewards and, 55
233
Index
Drives, motivational, 2—3 Erving, Julius, 125

Drucker, Peter F., 196—97 Ethical standards, 13 9 —4 0
Dumbing Us Down, Gatto, 183 Excellence, mundanity of, 125
Duncker, Karl, 42 Exercise, physical, Type I, 202
Dunn, Elizabeth, 141 Experience Sampling Method, 11 4
Dutton, Jane, 1 1 9 External drives, 3, 18 —19
Dweck, Carol, 73; and effort, 125; External fairness o f compensation, 171
Mindset: The New Psychology External motivations, and algorithmic
o f Success, 1 8 7 -8 8 ; and praise tasks, 30
for children, 17 8 —79; and External rewards, Type X behavior and,
self-theories, 12 0 —23 7 7 -7 8
Extrinsic aspirations, 1 4 2 -4 4
Echo boomers. See Young adults Extrinsic motivations, 10, 18—19; and
Economic bubbles, 57 creativity, 2 2 2 n l l; ethical
Economics: and behavior, 2 5 -2 7 ; standards as, 140; and human
modern, views of, 1 1 6 irrationality, 27; management
Educators, Type I toolkit, 1 7 4 -8 4 and, 88; negative effects, 49—59;
Effort: mastery and, 125, 208; open source and, 22; positive
self-theories and, 122 results, 60—69; Type X behavior
Employees: and mastery, 119 ; and a n d ,7 7 - 7 8 , 2 11
organizational goals, 165; Extrinsic rewards, 37—4 1 ; artists and,
views of, 76, 9 1 - 9 2 4 5 —46; and short-term thinking,
Empowerment, 1 1 1 ; notion of, 9 1 —92 58; unexpected, 66—67
Encyclopedias, online, 1 6 - 1 7
Engagement, 1 1 2 ; autonomy and, 110 ; Fairness in compensation, 171
and “flow,” 1 1 5 ; and mastery, Falk, Stefan, 117
207; Motivation 3.0 and, 11 1 Farquhar, Scott, 92, 94
Enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, 23 Fast Company magazine, 11 7
Eno, Brian, 158 Federer, Roger, 58
Entity theory o f intelligence, 12 1, 123; FedEx days, 93, 97, 16 9 , 2 09 ; for
effort and, 122 children, 17 6
Entrepreneurs: and autonomy, 95, 104; Feedback: critical, mastery and, 159; praise
and open-source software, 22; as, 178, 179; for students, 177
and purpose, 136 Ferris, Joshua, Then We Came to the End,
Environmental drive, 3. See also 1 8 8 -8 9
Punishment; Rewards The Fifth Discipline: The A r t and
Erickson, Tamara, 10 0 —101 Practice of the Learning
Ericsson, Anders, 124, 1 5 8 -5 9 Organization, Senge, 194
234
Index
Financial incentives, and performance, The Future o f Management, Hamel and

41-42 Breen, 200
Finding Flow: The Psychology of
Engagement with Everyday Life , Galenson, David, 12 6
Csikszentmihalyi, 187 Gardner, Howard, 73; Good Work: When
Finite and Infinite Games, Case, 18 5 —86 Excellence and Ethics Meet, 18 9
Firefox, 22 Gatto, John Taylor, Dumbing Us Down, 183
Fitness plan, Type I, 2 0 1 —2 Generalized anxiety disorder, 1 2 7 -2 9
“Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Generation Y, 13 5 —39
Your Children Do," Tulley, 18 1 Georgetown University Hospital, 97
Fixed mindset, 12 1n , 18 7 —88 Gladwell, Malcolm, Outliers: The Story of
Flaste, Richard, Why We Do W hat We Success, 19 0
Do: Understanding Self-Motivation , Glossary, 2 09 —11
187 Glucksberg, Sam, 4 3 - 4 4 , 6 1 —62
Flex time, 92 Gneezy, Uri, 5 1—53
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Goals, 49—51, 2 0 1 ; of college graduates,
Csikszentmihalyi, 18 6 —87 142—44; in “flow,” 115 ; individual
“Flow” (mental state), 1 1 4 - 1 9 ; and performance review, 157;
anxiety, 1 2 8 -2 9 ; children and, organizational, setting of, 165;
130; mastery and, 12 0 , 125, publicly held companies and,
2 0 7 -8 ; measurement of, 15 3 -5 4 ; 57; purpose and, 135—37, 208;
open-source projects and, 23 ROWEs and, 87; self-fulfilling,
flOw (video game), 11 8 113 , 114 ; self-theories and,
Flowchart, rewards use, 69 12 1—22; Type X behavior and,
Flow-friendly environments, 1 1 7 —19 123
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance Godin, Seth, 95
imaging), reward study, 55 Goldilocks tasks, 1 1 8 —19, 12 9 , 208,
“For-benefit” organizations, 24—25, 136 2 0 9 - 1 0 ; for groups, 1 6 8 -6 9
Fourth Sector Network, 24 Good behavior, rewards and, 4 7 —49
Freedom: creative, 90, 193; human, 108 Good to G reat , Collins, 198
Freud, Sigmund, 113 Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics
Frey, Bruno, 28, 73 Meet, Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi,
Friedman, Meyer, 7 4 - 7 5 , 77 and Damon, 189
Friedman, Milton, 11 6 Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team o f Rivals:
Fry, A rt, 95 The Political Genius of Abraham
Functional fixedness, 43 Lincoln, 1 9 0 -9 1
Functional magnetic resonance imaging Google, 96
(fMRI), reward study, 55 Grades, students and, 176—77
235
Index
Green, Francis, 91 Human condition, intrinsic motivation

Green Cargo, 1 1 7 , 11 8 and, 4
Greene, David, 37 —39 Human nature, 88—90; and autonomy, 108
G rit, mastery and, 12 4 —25, 208 Human needs, universal, 72
Grouplets, 105 The Human Side o f Enterprise, McGregor,
Groups, Goldilocks tasks for, 16 8 —69 76, 19 5 , 19 6
Growth mindset, 121n , 18 7 —88 Humanistic psychology, 20
Gunther, Jeff, 8 5 —88, 100 “Hurry sickness,” 75
Halberstam, David, The Amateurs: The Identity, good work and, 18 9

Story o f Four Young Men and Their "If-then” rewards, 3 8 - 3 9 , 8 0, 14 5 , 2 10 ;
Quest fo r an Olympic G old M edal , and addiction, 53—54; allowances
191 as, 17 8 ; and altruism, 49; and
Hamei, Gary, 88; The Future of Management, creativity, 4 4 —4 5 , 4 6, 65 —66, 68;
200; and management, 13 8 —39, Hsieh and, 10 2 ; and mastery, 58;
200; and wealth maximization, praise as, 17 8 , 17 9 ; and routine
134 tasks, 62—64; and thinking, 56
Happiness: fulfilling work and, 19 0 ; Incentives, and performance, 40^42
money and, 140—4 1 Incremental theory o f intelligence, 12 1,
Harlow, Harry F., 2 21n 4 ; primate 12 3 ; effort and, 122
behavior study, 1—4 Independence, autonomy and, 90
Harvard Business School students, 13 7 —38 India, extrinsic incentives test, 4 0 ^ 1
Health, Type I behavior and, 80 Individuals: and autonomy, 1 0 7 -8 ; Type
Heart disease, incidence of, 74—75 I toolkit for, 15 3 —61
Heuristic tasks, 29; rewards and, 30, Industrial Revolution, 19
4 3 - 4 4 , 46 “Infinite games,” 18 5 —86
Hewlett, Sylvia, 135 Informational motivators, 6 7 —68
Home Education Magazine, 183 Innovation, 90
Homeschooling, 183 Intellectual challenge, productivity and,
Homeshoring, 10 3 —4 11 7
Homework, for children, 175 Intelligence, beliefs about, 1 2 1 -2 3
Homo Oeconomicus Maturus (Mature Interest, capacity for, 72
Economic Man), 28 Internal fairness of compensation, 171
Household chores, and allowances, Intrinsic aspirations, 142
1 7 7 -7 8 Intrinsic goals, 202
How the Mighty F a ll, Collins, 198 Intrinsic motivation, 3—4, 8—9, 204; and
Hsieh, Tony, 1 0 2 -3 , 107 achievement, 79; and coworkers,
Human behavior, 18—20, 73 10 6 ; creativity and, 30, 46;
236
Index
enjoyment based, 23; goals Lederhausen, Mats, 13 4

and, 5 1; Motivation 2.0 and, Legal codes, 23
35; Olympic athletes and, 19 1; Lepper, Mark, 37—39
in organizations, 16 7 ; positive Life expectancy o f baby boomers, 132
feedback and, 67; rewards and, Lifetime, standard patterns, 15 6
3 7 -4 0 ; Twain and, 36—37; Type Lincoln, Abraham, 15 4 , 190—91
I behavior and, 77, 2 11 Linux, 22
Intrinsic Motivation, Deci, 71 Littky, Dennis, 180
Irrationality, human, 27—28 LiveOps, 103
Low-profit limited liability (L3C)
JetBlue, 103 corporations, 24, 13 6
Jung, Carl, 11 2 Luce, Clare Booth, 154
Kahneman, Daniel, 26 McGregor, Douglas, 20, 78, 157,

Kelley, Tom, 90 195—96; and corporate leadership,
Kelly, Marjorie, 136—37 7 5 —77; The Human Side of
Kennedy, John F., 15 4 Enterprise, 76, 19 5 , 19 6
Kimley-Horn and Associates, 163 McKinsey & Co., 30
Knowledge workers, autonomy of, 197 McKnight, W illiam , 94—96
Knutson, Brian, 5 4 -5 6 Management, as technology, 88—89, 200.
Koestner, Richard, 62 See also Business management
Kohn, Alfie, Punished by Rewards: The “Managing Oneself,” Drucker, 197
Trouble with G old Stars, Incentive Maslow, Abraham, 20
Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes, Mastery, 58, 1 0 9 -3 0 , 15 8 -6 0 , 2 0 7 -8 ;
39, 192 achievement and, 79; athletic,
Kunitz, Stanley, 135 19 2 —93; and creativity, 66;
goals and, 50; homework and,
Lakhani, Karim, 23 17 5 ; Type I activity, 202; Type I
Language: of growth, 18 8 ; Type I, 165 behavior and, 80, 201
Laws, and economic self-interest, 25—26 Mastery asymptote, 2 10
Lawyers, 9 8 - 1 0 0 Mature Economic Man (Homo Oeconomicus
Leadership, of corporations, problems of, Maturus), 28
7 5 -7 7 Maverick: The Success Story Behind the
Learning: extrinsic rewards and, 39; World’s Most Unusual Workplace,
intrinsic motivation and, 4; Semler, 19 3 —94
short-term rewards and, 58 MBA Oath, 138
Learning goals, 1 2 1 —22 Meddius, 86—87
“Learning organizations,” 194 Mediratta, Bharat, 105
237
Index
Mental health, Type I behavior and, 80 207; “flow” and, 129; McGregor
Microsoft, encyclopedia by, 1 5 - 1 7 and, 19 6 ; MBA Oath, 138;
Millennials. See Young adults Montessori schools and, 18 2 ;
Mindset, mastery as, 12 0 —23, 208 and purpose, 134, 135, 136,
Mindset: The New Psychology o f Success, 13 7 , 208; team and, 10 5 ;
Dweck, 121n , 1 8 7 -8 8 technique and, 104
Mission, good work and, 18 9 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 78n
MLab, 200 Mozilla, 24—25
Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa, 137 MSN Encarta , 15 —17
Money: charitable acts and, 2 2 4 n l3 ; and Mycoskie, Blake, 1 3 5 -3 6
happiness, 140—4 1 ; as motivation,
79, 87, 93, 170 Needs: human, autonomy as, 90;
Monitoring of work, 3 1 - 3 2 psychological, 7 2 -7 3
Montessori, Maria, 182 Negative behavior, motivations and, 35
Montessori Schools, 18 2 —83 Negative effect of rewards, 8—9
Motion, Newton’s law, 3 4 -3 5 Nelson, George, 98
Motivation: beliefs about, 9, 10; Newton, Isaac, 34—35
understanding of, 1 4 5 -4 6 Niemiec, Christopher, 142
Motivation 1.0, 18, 2 10 Nisbett, Robert, 37
Motivation 2.0, 1 8 - 2 1 , 34—35, 145, Nobel Prize in Economics, 26
205, 2 10 ; and accountability, Noncommissioned art, 4 5 - 4 6 , 65
10 7 ; artists and, 10 6 ; behavior Non-employer businesses, 31
type, 77; billable hours, 99; and Noninstrumental activities, 1 2 8 -2 9
compliance, 1 1 1 ; and “flow,” 116 ; Nonprofit organizations, 23
“for-benefit” organizations and, Nonroutine work, 2 10
25; heuristic tasks and, 3 0 - 3 1 ; Nontangible rewards, 67
human irrationality and, 27; and Nonwinnable games, 185
human needs, 72; and intrinsic Norton, Michael, 141
motivation, 23, 28; problems of, “Not only for profit” enterprises, 137
32—33, 3 5 -3 6 ; punishment and, “Now that” rewards, 66—67, 68, 2 10 ;
53; and purpose, 13 3 -3 4 , 135, peer-to-peer, 163
136; and work, 31
Motivation 2 .1, 20, 91 Oblique cards, 158
Motivation 3.0, 77, 89, 206, 2 1 0 ; and Off-site days, organizational, 169
accountability, 107; Atlassian, 93; Office hours, Type I employers, 16 5 —66
autonomy and, 97; billable hours Offshoring of algorithmic tasks, 29 —30
and, 9 9 - 1 0 0 ; compensation, Olympic athletes, motivation, 191
170—73; and engagement, 1 1 1 , Once a Runner, Parker, 19 2 —93
238
Index
Open source, business model, 2 1 - 2 3 , 25 Positive feedback, 6 7 - 6 8

Open-source projects, teams and, 106 Positive psychology movement, 73
Operating systems, 17—20 Posters, motivational, individual, 16 0 —6 1
Optimal experiences, 186 -8 7 ; work and, 31 Post-it notes, 95
Organization o f businesses, purpose and, Praise, 6 7 -6 8 ; for children, 178
136 Predictably Irrational , Ariely, 27
Organizations: and autonomy, 107; and Pressfield, Steven, The W ar o f A rt: Break
'‘flow" state of workers, 1 2 9 -3 0 ; Through the Blocks and Win Your
and goals, 5 1; health gauge, 139; Inner Creative Battles, 193
and motivation, 9, 20—2 1; Primate behavior, study of, 1—2
publicly held corporations, Principal-agent theory, 54
23—24, 57—58; purpose and, Pro-social spending, 141
144, 208; Type I, 1 9 5 -2 0 0 ; Problem-solving, candle problem, 4 2 —44
Type I toolkit for, 1 6 2 -7 3 Productivity, intellectual challenge and,
Orkut, 96 117
Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell, 190 Professionalism, Erving’s view, 125
Profit, corporations organized for, 23—24
Pain, mastery and, 12 3 —25, 208 Profit goals, 1 4 2 -4 4
Parents, Type I toolkit, 17 4 —84 Profit motive, 13 4 —35, 144
Parent-teacher conferences, 177 “Pronoun test” of organizations, 139,
Parker, John L., Jr., Once a Runner, 1 9 2 -9 3 1 6 6 -6 7
Peer-to-peer awards, 163 Proudfoot, Alec, 96
People, management of, 88 —92 Psychological needs, innate, 7 2 -7 3
Performance: incentives and, 4 0 —42; Psychology, Csikszentmihalyi and, 112 —14
Type I metrics, 173 Publicly held corporations, 23—24, 57—58
Performance goals, 1 2 1 -2 2 Puget Sound Community School, 182
Performance reviews, personal, 15 7 —58 Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold
Personal fulfillment, engagement and, 112 Stars , Incentive Plans. As. Praise,
Pessimism, lawyers and, 98 and Other Bribes, Kohn, 39, 192
PHH Arval, 103 Punishment, as motivation, 3, 1 8 - 1 9 ,
Pink, Daniel H., A Whole New Mind: 34—35, 5 1 —53; and algorithmic
Why Right-Brainers W ill Rule the tasks, 30; flaws, 59
Future, 2 2 2 n l0 Purpose, 64, 1 3 1 - 4 6 , 208; of homework,
Play, 37—40; nature of, Twain and, 3 6 -3 7 ; 175; individual, 154—56; Lincoln
study of, 113 ; work as, 130, 211 and, 19 0 ; organizational, 166;
Policies of business organizations, teamwork and, 16 8 —6 9 ; Type I
139—4 1; and purpose, 208 behavior and, 80 —8 1, 201
Porras, Jerry, B uilt to Last , 198 Purpose goals, 142
239
Index
Purpose maximizers, business models, 25 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 154

Puzzle, Harlow’s, \—4., 2 Rosenman, Ray, 74 —75
Routine work, 2 1 1 ; rewards and, 6 2 -6 4
Quarterly earnings, 57, 58 ROW E (results-only work environment),
Quarterly goals, 173 8 6 -8 8 , 10 0 , 199, 2 1 0 - 1 1
Rules o f Thumb, Webber, 1 5 9 -6 0
Rationale, for routine tasks, 64 Running, 201
Reading list, Type I, 1 8 5 -2 0 0 Rustichini, Aldo, 5 1 —53
Recognition, as motivation, 79—80 Ryan, Richard, 9 1, 10 7 , 10 8 ; and
Reggio Emilia philosophy o f education, extrinsic aspirations, 14 2 —44;
183 and intrinsic motivation, 62;
Rehnquist, W illiam , 99 self-determination theory,
Reich, Robert B., 12 1, 139, 166—67 7 1-7 2 , 8 9 -9 0
Relatedness, need for, 7 2, 73
Relationships, profit goals and, 14 4 Sabbaticals, 15 6
Relevance of studies, 179 Sagmeister, Stefan, 10 4 , 156
Renewable resource, Type I behavior as, 80 Salieri, Antonio, 78n
Repetition, mastery and, 159 SaiudCoop, 137
Report cards, 17 6 —77 Sawyer Effect, 37—4 0 , 119 , 1 2 9 ,2 1 1 ;
Ressler, Cali, 86, 10 1, 199; and flex time, artists and, 4 5 ; and routine
92; ROWE experiment, 100; Why tasks, 62
Work Sucks and How to F ix It, 199 Schmidt, Peter, 158
Results-only work environment (ROWE), Scholder, Fritz, 1 1 9
8 6 -8 8 , 100, 199, 2 1 0 - 1 1 Schools, 9; motivation of children,
Rewards: and algorithmic tasks, 30; 17 4 -7 7 ; Type I, 1 8 0 -8 3
baseline, 35; and creative thinking, Science, and motivation, 145
4 4 -4 6 ; effective, 206; extrinsic, Scientific management, 19
and heuristic tasks, 31; flaws, 59; Schwab, Klaus, 1 1 5 —16
flowchart for use, 69; hidden costs, Self-determination, need for, 73
37^40; and intrinsic motivation, Self-determination theory (SDT), 7 1 - 7 4 ,
3 ^ , 8 - 9 ; as motivation, 3, 18 -19 , 8 9 -9 0
34—35, 170; negative effects, Self-direction, 89, 9 2; Type I behavior
49—59; open source and, 22; and, 80 —8 1 ; of workers, 3 1 —32
positive results, 60—69; problems Self-interest, economic, 2 5 -2 6
of, 205; SDT and, 72; of self, 202; Self-management, Drucker and, 1 9 6 -9 7
young adults and, 135 Self-mastery, freedom and, 193
Rhesus monkeys, puzzle for, 1^4, 2 Self-motivation: Collins and, 198; Deci
Rochester, New York, 70 a n d ,187
240
Index
Self-organized teams, 106 Talent is Overrated: W hat Really Separates

Self-theories, 12 0 —23 World-Class Performers from
Seligman, Martin, 7 3, 98 Everybody Else, Colvin, 18 6
Semco, 1 9 3 -9 4 Task, and autonomy, 94—98
Semler, Ricardo: Maverick: The Success Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 19, 2 8 - 2 9
Story Behind the World’s Most Teachers, Type I toolkit, 174—84
Unusual Workplace, 193—94; The Team o f Rivals: The Political Genius of
Seven-Day Weekend, 19 4 Abraham Lincoln , Goodwin,
Senge, Peter М., The Fifth Discipline: The 19 0 -9 1
A rt and Practice of the Learning Teams, autonomy and, 10 4 —6;
Organization , 194 Goldilocks tasks for, 16 8 —69
The Seven-Day Weekend, Semler, 19 4 Technique, autonomy and, 1 0 1 - 4
Shirky, Clay, 167 Telecommuting, 32
Shortcuts, 51 thatgamecompany, 1 1 8
Short-term thinking, 56—58 Then We Came to the End , Ferris, 18 8 —89
Shortz, W ill, 124 Theories of management, 19 5 —96;
Skilling, Jeff, 78n X a n d Y , 7 6 -7 7
Skinner, B. F., 11 3 Third drive. See Intrinsic motivation
Social benefit, businesses for, 24 Thompson, Jody, 86, 10 0 , 19 9 ; and flex
Social businesses, 24 time, 92; ROW E experiment,
“Socially responsible” businesses, 137 100; Why Work Sucks an d How to
Societies, operating systems, 17—20 Fix It, 19 9
Software: and intellectual labor, 30; open Three 3M, autonomy at, 94 —96
source, 22 Time, autonomy and, 98 —10 1
Soma puzzle cube, 5—9, 35 The Tinkering School, 181
Springsteen, Bruce, 78n Titmuss, Richard, 47
Standards, good work and, 189 TOMS shoes, 1 3 5 -3 6
Sternberg, Robert, 7 3 -7 4 Toolkit, Type I, 14 9 —200
Stigler, George, ] 16 Transcendence, 27
Strickland, Bill, 140 Trump, Donald, 78n
Students: self-evaluation, 177; as Tulley, Gever, 181
teachers, 184 Tversky, Amos, 26
Success: Gladwell and, 190; intrinsic Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Tom
motivation and, 79 Saiiyer, 36—37, 2 11
Sudbury Valley School, 181 “20 percent time," 94, 9 6 - 9 7 , 10 5 , 2 1 1 ;
Suvorov, Anton, 5 3 -5 4 organizations and, 16 2 —63
Sweden, blood donor experiment, Type A behavior, 75; Type X and, 80
47 -4 8 Type В behavior, 75
241
Type I behavior, 10, 7 7 - 8 1 , 89, 123,
2 0 1 , 2 0 6 -7 , 2 1 1 ; autonomy and,
94, 98; by bosses, 16 5 —66;
individual, 15 3 —6 1 ; lawyers and,
9 8 ; mastery and, 1 1 1 , 120;
purpose and, 133
Type I Fitness Plan, 2 0 1 - 2
Type I organizations, 101
Type I reading list, 18 5 —200
Type I Toolkit, 10, 1 4 9 -2 0 0
Type X behavior, 7 7 - 8 1 , 12 3 , 206, 2 11 ;
and “flow,” 1 1 6 ; and purpose,
1 3 3 -3 4
Unethical behavior, 56, 13 9 ; extrinsic

motivation and, 50—51
Unexpected rewards, 66—67
United States M ilitary Academy, West
Point, 1 2 3 -2 4
University o f Rochester, 70—7 1, 142
Unschooling, 183
U tility, work as, 31
Vermont, L3C corporations, 24

Video games, “flow” experiences, 118
Vocation Vacations, 31
Volunteerism, 134
Wages, above average, 172

W aldorf schools, 183
The W ar o f A rt: Break Through the Blocks
and Win Your Inner Creative
Battles , Pressfield, 193
Washor, Elliot, 180
Weaknesses, work on, mastery and, 159
Wealth maximization, 134
Web server software, open source, 22
Webber, Alan, Rules of Thumb, 15 9 —60
2
idex
Websites: design of, 167; for motivational

posters, 1 6 1 ; schools, 183
Welch, Jack, 78n
W hite-collar work, 29—30
W hole Foods, 105
A Whole New M ind: Why Right-Brainers
W ill Rule the Future, Pink,
222nlO
Why We Do W hat We Do: Understanding
Self-Motivation, Deci and Flaste,
187
W hy Work Sucks an d How to F ix It,
Ressler and Thompson, 19 9
Wikipedia, 16—17 , 2 1 , 32
Winfrey, Oprah, 78n
W. L. Gore & Associates, 105
W olf, Bob, 23
Woods, Tiger, 127
W ork, 76; autonomy and, 94 —98;
definitions, 1 0 1 ; and “flow”
state, 129; and play, 3 7 - 4 0 , 130,
2 1 1 ; fulfilling, 190; good, 189;
management theories, 19 5 -9 6 ;
motivations and, 3 0 -3 2 ;
nature of, Twain and, 36—37;
nonroutine, 2 1 0 ; routine, 2 1 1 ;
Taylor’s idea, 28—29
Workforce, engagement of, 111
Workplace: and motivation, 167;
Motivation 3.0-style, 10 2 —3
Wrzesniewski, Amy, 1 1 9
Yellen, Janet, 172

Young adults, and purpose, 13 5 —39, 142
Yunus, Muhammad, 24
Zappos.com, 10 2 —3
Zen o f compensation, 1 7 0 -7 3
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THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER

'D rive drives a stake through the bedrock of classic “if-then”

‘Pink’s ideas deserve a wide hearing. Corporate boards, in fact, could

‘A powerhouse’ USA Today

‘Pink’s analysis - and new model - of motivation offers tremendous

‘These lessons are worth repeating, and if more companies feel

‘Important reading . . . an integral addition to a growing body of

The A dventures o f Joh n n y Bunko

Free A gent N ation

First published in Great Britain in 2 0 10 by Canongate Books Ltd,

Copyright © Daniel H. Pink, 2009

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in the Unites States in 2009 by Riverhead Books, an imprint of

‘Sext’, copyright © 19 55 by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems by W.H. Auden,

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publicatton Data

ISB N 978 1 78689 17 0 9

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A

www.lsc.org FSC* C018072

the su rp risin g trio that m otivates me

IN T R O D U C T IO N : T he P u z z lin g P u z zle s of H a rry H arlow

“In scientific terms, it w as akin to rollin g a steel b a ll dow n an in clin ed

C H A P T E R 1. T he Rise and Fall of M o tiva tio n 2.0 15

C H A P T E R 2. Seven R easons C a rro ts and S tick s

C H A P T E R 2A. . . . and the Special C ir c u m s ta n c e s

C H A P T E R 3. Type I and Type X 70

“A picture may be worth a thousand words— but sometimes neither is as

Type I for Individuals: Nine Strategies for Awakening Your Motivation 1 53

Type I for Organizations: Nine Ways to Improve Your Company,

The Zen of Compensation: Paying People the Type I Way 170

The Type I Reading List: Fifteen Essential Books 185

Listen to the Gurus: Six Business Thinkers Who Get It 1 95

Drive: The Recap 203

Drive: The Glossary 209

The Drive Discussion Guide: Twenty Conversation Starters to

Find Out More— About Yourself and This Topic 2 17

A ck now ledgm ents 219

n the m iddle of the last century, two young scientists conducted

H a rlow ’s pu zzle in th e s ta r tin g (left) a n d s o lv e d (rig h t) p ositio n s.

The experim enters placed the puzzles in the m onkeys’ cages to

frequently. “Introduction of food in the present experim ent,” H arlow

It w ould appear that this drive . . . m ay be as basic and strong

In the sum m er of 1969, Edward Deci was a Carnegie M ellon U n i­

draw ings of three puzzle configurations, and copies of Time, T he N ew

G roup A N o re w a rd Rew ard N o rew ard

G ro u p В N o rew ard N o rew ard N o rew ard

The tw ist came m idw ay through each session. After a participant

T h is is a b o o k about m otivation. I w ill show th at m uch of w hat

how to apply these concepts to education and to our lives outside of

The Rise and Fall

m agine it ’s 1995. You sit down w ith an economist— an accom­

of topics. W ell-com pensated managers w ill oversee the project to

no-brainer that our economist w ouldn’t even have considered p u t­

/ Computers— whether the g ia n t m ainfram es in D eci’s experim ents,

chirping in your pocket— all have operating system s. Beneath the

Harnessing this second drive has been essential to economic progress

or w ield in g a sharper stick. But what this operating system lacked

business. And if we exam ine those in co m p atib ility problems closely,

THREE IN C O M PA TIB ILIT Y PROBLEM S

Go back to that encyclopedic showdown between M icrosoft and

B ut ultim ately, open source depends on intrinsic m otivation

objective of those who run them — practically, legally, in some ways

as a “for-benefit” organization. And three U.S. entrepreneurs have

because we were such awesome self-interest calculators, laws and

If that seems far-fetched, consider some of our other bizarre behav­

In the sum m er of 1969, Edward Deci was a Carnegie M ellon U n i

m agine it ’s 1995. You sit down w ith an economist— an accom

no-brainer that our economist w ouldn’t even have considered p u t

If that seems far-fetched, consider some of our other bizarre behav

the correct answer, and deliver it instantaneously from their com

To r e c a p , M otivation 2.0 suffers from three co m p atib ility prob

principles can help us comprehend our social surroundings and pre

Another study of artists over a longer period shows that a con

If some scientists believe that “if-then” m otivators and other extrin

T h in k back to the candle problem again. The incentivized p artici

to fall back on extrinsic m otivators. To understand w hat those cir

solution. He transformed a challenging righ t-b rain task into a rou

ochester, N ew York, is an u n likely epicenter for a social earth

tendency. W e’re keen responders to positive and negative reinforce

Sternberg— who have changed our view of in telligen ce and creativ

of modern m anagem ent. He thought th at the problem w ith corpo

T ype I b e h a v io r is a re n e w a b le re so u rc e . T hink of Type X behav