Motivated

I read 'Drive' by Donald Pink last year after reading a review of this book. This year, we are reading the book at work - as a sort of corporate book club? - and I wish I could send a copy to every leader in the govt or at least to the Minister of Education. 

The book discusses motivation and it speaks to me both at a personal level and at a professional level. 

Many times, after running a workshop, I have had teachers come up to me and say how much they enjoyed the workshop and how much they learnt, then there will be a "...but". "But my students aren't even motivated to come to school." "But how do I deal with unmotivated kids?" And I have never had an answer. More recently, I have been asking myself - where has my fire gone? Why don't I look forward to going to work? And reading this book again this year, with the ability to look back over the events of last year in the light of it, has helped me understand the frustrations I have felt.

In a nutshell, Pink says that management theories and conventional wisdom of the past decades have favoured the carrot-and-stick approach to managing people. A combination of incentives and disincentives have been crafted over the years to keep people working as well as to keep them in line. I think Singapore especially has got this down to a fine art with our performance bonuses, baby bonuses, demerit points and fines. Pink calls the carrot-and-stick approach Motivation 2.0. He goes on to point out that far from creating more of the desired behaviour and less of the undesired behaviour, this approach has done little to create change.

He argues compellingly, instead, that what is needed is Motivation 3.0 and he says that the key lies in giving people autonomy, mastery and purpose - giving people some element of choice, allowing them to work from their positions of strength and creating a sense of meaning and purpose in the work they do.

It is astounding that the research cited in this book has been ignored over and over again over the decades. I suppose it is somehow deceptively reasonable to accept that people would want the incentives of money, fame and power and that they would be deterred by disincentives of fines or shame. 

The book makes so much sense to me I feel euphoric every time I read a portion of it. It is as if someone has finally explained me to me. This is why I HATE performance ranking. This is why I just want to teach. This is why I would tutor kids FOR FREE! This is why I was so unhappy last year when tasks needed to be done or re-done without me knowing why. 

I hope the book will result in some real changes at my workplace. It's a promising sign that we are all reading it and discussing it once a month. What I'm glad about is that it gives us a common language that I can use to negotiate for the space and purpose I need.