Recently finished reading Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”. When considering how to motivate those performing tasks requiring creative thinking…those “heuristic” tasks, science proves that intrinsic motivation is the only way to get people to do what you want them to do.
People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s instrinsic motivation toward the activity.
-Dan Pink
In a 21st-century world, carrots and sticks…and management in general…don’t seem to be an effective approach for any but monotonous tasks requiring little cognitive effort.
