Royal Society of Arts
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 17 months, 2010–2022
10:48 · 20M views · Apr 1, 2010
An RSA Animate whiteboard adaptation of Dan Pink's talk on what motivates people at work. It argues that beyond simple tasks, autonomy, mastery and purpose drive performance more than money.
HN uses it in discussions of pay, management, and motivation as the standard short explanation of autonomy, mastery and purpose.
20 comments from Hacker News
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 this 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.
There's a fantastic video on What Motivates Us. Link is [video] this 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: this 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: this 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: this video