Overview
Daniel Pink, in his book “Drive”, dwells on the basic mechanisms of motivating the employees within a company. He explains the approach where there is no need to use the method of reward and punishment. Even though it is evident that money is the motivation for the majority of today’s workers, Pink states that there are several levels of this motivational structure. To his mind, this viewpoint is outdated, and that is why Pink suggests another approach that implements three new pillars:
- autonomy,
- mastery,
- purpose.
Autonomy means that employees want to regulate their work relationships and assignments on their own. Mastery means that employees want to develop their professional skill and become better in everything they do as long as it matters to them. Purpose means that people want to do significant things for the sake of something that is greater than they are. Pink also proposes new methods of evading the flaws of extrinsic motivation and using the extrinsic rewards.
Purpose
The purpose of this book is to show entrepreneurs, bosses, employers, and managers that there are more ways to evaluate and assess their employees’ work quality and productivity. Pink gives out the useful info that is to be processed by the chief managers and passed on to their subject managers. He also tries to convince the reader that the basic materialistic reward and punishment approach is outdated and should be reformed as soon as possible with the intention of increasing the efficiency. The key point of the book is that we should understand that people cannot only be governed by rewards and punishment if we want to improve employees’ devotion to their duties and increase their contentment.
Evaluation
The author achieved his goals by elaborating a new organizational structure that accompanies the newly implemented methods of employee’s reward and punishment developed by Pink. He also dwells on the symptoms he found may cause systematic difficulties for the company. Pink states that the biggest problems that a company can encounter are decreased cooperation and unethical behavior of its workers (Pink, 2011).
As a relevant source of evidence, the author uses the fact of the importance of balancing between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. His motivation study finds evidence in several defects that can be found in extrinsic motivation model (Pink, 2011).
Pink presents numerous original suggestions when it comes to the increase in completion of boring tasks. He uses autonomy, mastery, and purpose definitions as a means of diminishing the amount of procrastination among the employees (Pink, 2011). The idea, in Pink’s opinion, is to give the employees the freedom they need in order to complete the task but supervise their behavior insensibly.
There is a point in this book concerning the reward prior to completion that is not convincing. It has always been a known fact that not all the members of the crew typically show the same level of commitment and devotion. The problem, in this case, lies in the fact that the workers’ inevitably will focus their attention on the reward achievement, not the goal.
One thing that may be considered left out from Pink’s book is the extensive commentary on how to balance between the workers’ behavioral patterns and their motivation to achieve the goal. In other words, Pink’s explanations are short of the evidence of how to make every crew member happy with the least amount of effort.
The “Drive” is useful because it provides the reader with a fresh point of view on the issues of properly motivating the employees. The book guides the reader through the types of rewards, their advantages and disadvantages, and the perfect time to use (or not to use) them.
When it comes to the personal life, I believe that this book is a nice assistant. It teaches you how to treat people properly and explains the basic motives of one or another behavioral model. On a bigger scale, it seems like Pink’s book is suggesting to the reader to be a better person as there is no perfect “you’, and you should constantly work on how you behave and find different sources of motivation that you can use efficiently in order to get the job done.
In relation to the working life, the “Drives” proves to be a great personal guide of interpersonal employee-employee and employee-employer relationships. It teaches you to set the priorities properly and helps you understand the motivation behind the manager’s behavior and particular doings. A proper interpretation of those by the workers is one of the main ingredients in the recipe of a perfect team. To my mind, this book helps me in reassessing my working values and finding new ways of motivating myself
If we speak about the relationship between the culture and the book contents, it is evident that it brings novelty to the way United Arab Emirates government and people see employment. The reason for this is the uniqueness of the approach described in the book that indicates the possible UAE growth as it provides insight into the essentials of the efficient motivation.
Summary
The book gives the overall impression of an informative source that would be useful to workers just as much as it would be useful for managers. I would rate “The Drive” 10 out of 10, and my recommendation for the would-be readers is to assess the new ways to motivate themselves that are vividly presented by Daniel Pink.
Reference
Pink, D. (2011). Drive. New York, NI: Riverhead Books.