When lawyer Dan Pink tackles the subject of motivation, he does what lawyers are apt to do. He gets the details right but almost everything else wrong.
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The problem is that Pink continues to work from a fallaciously reductive theoretical foundation. Because of this, the techniques he suggests are correct, but the explanation he provides is upside down. This leads him to incorrectly dichotomize motivation into “extrinsic” and “intrinsic”. He is not alone in making this disastrous error.
Why is Dan’s right technique based on an incorrect theory problematic? Because the extensibility of his ideas is limited. Rather than transformation, we get only blind technique. as in the cases he cites in “FedEx Days” and the “20% Projects”. These practices appear to work…but it is vital to formulate a valid explanation of why they work.
Pink sets forth a classic and rather Maslovian model of “intrinsic” motivation. In Dan’s case, it is the desire for “autonomy”, “mastery”, and “purpose”. These are presented as universal components of the human psyche, but of course they represent nothing more than fancifully indefinable constructs plucked out of the imagination of reductionist thinkers. At least Skinner, the theorist of extrinsic motivation, demonstrated some rigor by reducing behavior to “stimulus” and “response” rather than just plucking some nebulous emotional states out of thin air.
Pink refers to experiments confirming that “external” motivational stimuli reduce performance, but he limits the observations to matters of creative action. If the ground on which his “intrinsic” motivators are founded is shaky, then his distinction between non-creative and creative action only weakens his foundations further.
In fact, the efficacy of the extrinsic motivation that he claims “works well” for certain kinds of tasks is not working well for any kinds of tasks! When “management” addresses workers as machine components, an effect is observed. The evidence does indicate that they perform mechanistic tasks more rapidly. But as Deming understood so well, the questions asked and measures employed belie the aim of the system. In pursuit of a reward, people sub-optimize the system—they take shortcuts, cheat, compromise the quality of output, quit their job for greener grass, etc. etc. It is only in the most superficial sense that those external motivators are “proven” effective.
I am reminded of the many times when I observed workers performing a task they described as “stupid”. When I asked why they continued to do things just that way, they would reply, “Because doing this way is what I get paid to do.” Game over? Not quite. The worker’s unhappiness continues to grow. Management’s distain for the dull witted worker continues to grow. Quality declines. Customers grow weary of mindless product and service. After all, nothing stands still.
The psycho-motivational régime that has dominated 20th century theory continues to view the individual as the focus of inquiry, looking for the buttons and levers that determine the course of the individual’s actions. Pink’s difference? We should substitute fuzzy and undefinable “intrinsic” buttons for easily defined “extrinsic” buttons. He is right about the contradictions produced by carrot and stick “extrinsic” motivation but he is wrong to gin up new class of motivators.
As is to be expected, Pink occasionally stumbles on to firmer ground. He flirts with the idea of “purpose” but he fails to understand the meaning and power the concept. It is of course, nearly synonymous with Deming’s idea of AIM, and as Deming understood, “purpose” is not the property of the individual. He said, “A system has an aim”. (Skinner says that we are born into this world with instinctual drives, and he is correct, but these drives do not constitute purpose.) Purposes are filled with meanings that are created and held by groups (social constructs). In experiment after experiment, “purpose” trumps “drives”. There is only one drive of importance, and that is the drive in every human being to be meaningfully engaged with our fellows in creating our socially constructed reality and to have our contribution acknowledged by others. Humans seek membership. We seek to be players. We seek to participate as creators, compulsively swimming upstream against the tides of entropy and meaninglessness.
How is this idea of what Victor Frankl called, “the will to meaning” in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning“, different from Pinks intrinsic motivators? It is different because the PROCESS can be observed in child development and other experimental work. The process can not only be observed and described, but it can be explained in terms of human development. To say that we are intrinsically motivated toward “autonomy” and “mastery” leaves us with a very big question beyond what those terms mean. It begs the question of why this would be so. The central condition of human development is that we are genetically programmed to acquire language in all its forms, through interaction with others. Language is not a vocabulary list learned by chimps. Language is the social behavior by which we create and share meaning—our intentions, our theories, and our methods.
Once you become acquainted with the process by which meaning is created and shared, you begin to see it in action wherever you look. It is the predominant process at work in all human behavior. If you want to produce performance improvement that makes things better AND makes better things, then build your organization—your society—in ways that allow the process by which meaning is created, to flourish. Google employees will create more interesting products and ditch diggers will dig better ditches. Everybody will win.
Hi Marc,
Thank you for calling attention to the video and for your helpful commentary as to what is nauseous about it.
I agree that Pink has something wrong. Indeed, he seems to demonstrate before our eyes how good ideas get usurped by the wrong headed. He presents intrinsic motivation as if it is a new and better way of manipulating people – what extrinsic motivation attempts to do.
He fails to make the case for intrinsic motivation as being a search for meaning. Almost any task can become meaningful – even, as Frankle suggests, the most awful tasks imaginable.
The autonomy, mastery and purpose trilogy is one of those all too common number tricks that often crop up in American ‘how-to’ pitches. (six secrets for XX etc). They don’t actually relate as a list of means to an end. A sense of purpose as a social construct is meaningful and deeply motivating. Serving it might result in mastery, whereas autonomy is perhaps a state of inner freedom that enables people to serve in the first place. Pink debases our use of language and makes it all the harder to communicate these valuable ideas.
Regards
John
John,
Well said! You have understood my meaning precisely. As you note, the rhetorical rule-of-threes device can be delightfully euphonious but style and substance are best when combined into a meaningful whole.
You might enjoy my post “Liars, Blowhards, Con Artists, and Management Consultants”
Marc
Marc and John,
So, do you guys think financial incentives are good for thinking problems? Do you disagree that Autonomy, Purpose, and Mastery are not the right set of motivators for these types of problems? If you do not agree, I am interested to hear your counter argument.
I get it that you don’t like Pink’s rhetorical style based on the insights you shared in your critique of his rhetoric. I look forward to your equally insightful, but more relevant point of view on motivation.
Thanks,
Gerald
Gerald,
I am suggesting the the concept of “motivation” is so embedded in a particular theory of human behavior that it would be best to drop it altogether. This leaves us with two well accepted and more fundamental psychological concepts—”instinctual drives” and “stimulus response”—and one social concept that has been around for a while but has not received a great deal of attention—”shared intentions”.
Instinctual drives are genetically determined. They are exhibited as a characteristic of an organisms genome which should be taken to include both physiological and behavioral programming. A birds chick’s flight “learning” behavior is a good example. So to is the sign behavior observed in various animal mating rituals. So to is the hunting behavior of cats. And so to, is the human infant’s language acquisition behavior, BUT once language is acquired, it becomes a whole new game for the human.
Stimulus-Response is an autonomic function that bypasses cognitive behavior. It is built-in at a physiological level. An example is drawing away from a potentially dangerous heat source or becoming “single-minded” with food cognition when extreme hunger threatens survival.
Intention is a characteristic of human behavior. (There is some evidence that supports rudimentary intentionality in some other organisms.) Intentionality is based in theory and prediction. It is a meaning construct in which humans organize their action in a manner that they believe will predictively result in some desired outcome, or some outcome trajectory. It can also be called “purpose” with a small ‘p”. W. E. Deming referred to this using the term “aim”.
Given these three components and in the absence of the concept of “motivators”, we are able to build theory that explains the behavior of all creatures, and more specifically the unique behavioral characteristics of humans. In other words, human action (as opposed to reaction) is built atop instinctual and stimulus-response behavior, but human behavior is qualitatively transformed through the social construction of linguistically realized, theory-based, intentionality.
In short, people do what they do based upon their intentions which are constructed in interaction with other humans. This process produces the world of meaning in which what is right and proper, desirable and undesirable, comes to be known. This is why W. E. Deming said, “Money is not a motivator”, and why the use of motivators, positive and negative, produce so many unanticipated and contradictory outcomes.
I know that the view I am presenting is difficult to grasp, but during the time of its emergence, so was the body of psychological theory that introduced the idea of motivation. The idea of motivation seems obvious to us today, only because we have been steeped in it for generations—schools, workplace, community, and family.
So, Dan Pink correctly points out, that the effects predicted by phycological-motivational theory are not born out in experiments. But as I said in my initial post, ginning up a different set of motivators is not the solution when dealing with failed theory.