RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

> “There is no reason that money can't be an effective motivator, or that grades can't motivate students in school,” he said. Ok, well then what about this [1] video from this [2] submission? This makes me think about something else entirely: It should be easier to draw connections between submissions like these. It should be easier to link repetitive discussions into a cohesive whole. It should be easier to build something grand from the time we invest in social news communities. As it is, it often feels like a waste of time. Someone please build this. My time's spoken for. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK] Edit: It'd be somewhere around the intersection of Stack Overflow, Wikipedia and HN

I'm note sure if its my favourite but its one i find really interesting. Daniel Pink's talk on Drive, what makes people motivated to perform in the workplace. Really good for employers. There is a TED talk on it and i've seen it but i actually like the RSA animate one better which is essentially the same talk. [VIDEO]

Exactly, the "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" video is a great rebuttal of this idea. [VIDEO]

There's a fantastic video on What Motivates Us. Link is [video] [VIDEO] . One of the things they showed an inverse correlation on amount someone gets paid and what they produce when it's anything above menial labor. Highly worth a watch.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey is a pretty seminal personal management book. It's my top recommendation in terms of "foundational" material. It's not got much in the way of practical tools, but the ideas are applicable everywhere. I would recommend Drive by Dan Pink if you're interested in learning more about creative motivation. It's pretty short, and actually very well summarised here: [VIDEO] Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is very good programmer-specific management material. They cite a lot of work benchmarking the productivity of different workplaces, so it's very "x is good, x is bad". Jim Collins' Good to Great is an examination of businesses that succeed vs fail, and the attributes that get them there, it's essentially an extended summary of a longitudinal study he and his team did of businesses that outperformed the stock market by a high factor over 10 years. It's more leadership than management, but still very useful. One that I haven't read yet (damn my stupidly big reading list) but recommend on reputation alone is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Here's a summary: [LINK] I share your frustration about blah-blah blog posts. With the exception of First, Break All The Rules (which I haven't read yet) and 7 Habits (which I forgive because it's so damn good), the books I mention are based on actual research which is cited in the book, not just some dude going "I think this because I know stuff".

My instantaneous gut reaction is discomfort. These are all good things, but the tone puts me off. As someone who appreciates autonomy, I would rather be given an objective with advice on how to attain it than rules to follow. Even if the content is the same, it shows more respect. In this case, the objective is simply situation awareness ( [LINK] ) for both parties. The advice is to ask, debrief, and warn. Dan Pink gave a good 10-minute talk about this sort of thing: [VIDEO]

This might fit in with Dan Pink's talk on 'Drive': [VIDEO] Passion can be driven by incentives outside of salary.

He is obviously not motivated by money and most people aren't when you dig deeper. Many geeks want to achieve mastery, succumb new challenges, etc. I recommend watching this [1] 10m video out about what drives us to understand this a little more. [1] [VIDEO]

current research suggests that the feeling of making constant progress and being appreciated at work are the most important motivator for people. [VIDEO]

[VIDEO] High enough salary + great benefits to the point where needs are met are ideal. "Rockstars" may be able to negotiate with companies who want to hire those kinds of people, but if you are hiring only the best people and not the best people for your company then your culture will suffer. I like the way Valve does things. No rockstar culture like WallSt or Hollywood has. Everyone gets even footing and credit. You can earn more if your peers agree that you deserve it - people there are not chasing rewards - they are doing what they love well and being rewarded for it. It seems to work very well for them and other co-op like companies.

Chris mentions the 3 things that motivate people. Good video about this from RSA Animate if you haven't seen it yet: [VIDEO]

For the record, I 100% believe in paying people what they are worth. Determining that worth isn't an exact science. I also believe that after a certain point, money has less appeal to people--that is, people are no longer motivated by the money. By asking someone what they want, I'd like them to tell me what it is they need to be happy, so I can offer it to them. The following video makes some pretty good points along that line: [VIDEO]

The previous manager was very good at "leading through inspiration". He made people feel good about themselves, feel like they were learning, and feel like they were making a difference both for their corner of the world and the whole organization. The new manager was good at keeping track of things and micromanaging. But the most inspiring line she could come up with was, "You still have a job." (I wish I was kidding.) She also had an unfortunate habit of lying badly and often, with a resulting destruction of trust. But that aspect I'm too bitter about at the moment to want to discuss. To see why it matters, go watch [VIDEO] . I believe that its message is not complete (for instance I've noticed that correlations between stress and mental performance is highly dependent upon the mental task you are doing), but what it says about motivation is spot on. The key factors are Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Good leaders can give people the sense of all three while still getting them to do what the organization needs them to do. Micromanagement makes it clear what the organization wants, but destroys motivation.

I'd argue it's not. People that are paid most to do a job that isn't repetitive manual labor have worst performance scores, time and time again. So unless CEOs are paid to manually bolt things or throws ball into a hoop, they probably aren't doing well because, in part, they are given money. Money introduces fear (i.e. fear that you won't make enough money or lose your position with lots of money) and that leads to tunnel vision. People give more performance if you give them more autonomy, mastery and purpose. [VIDEO]

Typically movie stars negotiate a tiny % of gross revenue in their contract. They used to negotiate for % of profit, but studios got very good at fiddling with the numbers for the film until a successful movie had nearly no profit. I don't see why that can't be done for software engineers. That is essentially dividends though, and it's obvious why growth companies don't want to do that. But it's also not clear that stock options have the intended motivating effect (it's not even clear that increases in salary or some kind of profit sharing would have the intended effect either[1]) I think it's clear that stock options are sub-optimal for the intended purpose, but it's not obvious to me how to fix that. [1] [VIDEO]

Provide an environment that give workers autonomy, mastery, and purpose (see Daniel Pink's work title Drive [VIDEO] ). You provide those three things and a sane group of people, happiness will follow.

Happiness is feeling useful/having purpose (autonomy, mastery, purpose) [1], meeting your basic needs (~$75K/year research shows [2]), and spending time with friends and loved ones [3] [4]. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK]

you said > hiring good people would be a roll of the dice and I'd even say that our whole economy wouldn't be able to function. > That's just a well accepted fact Says who? [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose were the three job satisfaction pillars in a popular RSAnimate whiteboard presentation video a few years ago... and it resonated with me (while feeling incomplete, given it omits social / interpersonal factors). EDIT: Found the video: [VIDEO]

I'm still around thinking about my next answer. In the mean time, have a video about drive/what motivates us by Dan Pink for RSA. [VIDEO]