What Drives Motivation
Transcript from the
PBS NEWSHOUR
ANALYSIS
AIR DATE:
April 15, 2010
SUMMARY
business and economics correspondent
Paul Solman
reports on what drives people's behavior
in the modern workplace.
+++
PAUL SOLMAN:
The candle,
box of tacks,
book of matches --
an old puzzle
with a strangely relevant
economic message.
Objective?
Fix the lit candle
to the wall
so no wax hits the table.
Economics:
The faster you do it,
the more money you make.
Punchline:
Conventional economics is wrong,
because the greater the monetary incentive,
the longer the solution takes --
a solution you will see in a bit.
Relevance?
Executive pay
and Wall Street bonuses,
which might not enhance,
but actually retard
"High Performance",
or so says writer
Dan Pink,
once Al Gore's
chief speechwriter.
Pink's first book,
"A Whole New Mind,"
made waves
by arguing that skills
linked to the
creative right side of our brains
dominate
today's global economy,
instead of
left hemisphere thinking.
DANIEL PINK, author,"Drive":
Logical,
linear,
sequential,
analytical,
SAT abilities,
spreadsheet abilities,
and today those abilities are essential --
but they're not enough.
And it's now
abilities characteristic
of the right hemisphere:
artistry,
empathy,
inventiveness,
big-picture thinking.
And that's changed
the game of business, too,
because what it's done is,
it's put a premium
on coming up with
something new,
profoundly new,
iterating something
the world didn't know
it was missing.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Pink's new book, "Drive,"
takes the next step:
You motivate right brain creativity
with more human,
less material
incentives.
DANIEL PINK:
We tend to think that
the way you get people
to perform at a high level is,
you reward
what you want
and punish
what you don't want --
"carrot and stick".
If you do this,
then you get that.
That turns out,
the science says,
to be an extraordinarily effective way
of motivating people
for those routine tasks,
simple,
straightforward,
where there's a right answer.
They end up being
a terrible form
for motivating people
to do creative conceptual tasks.
PAUL SOLMAN:
How does the science show this?
DANIEL PINK:
If you offer me a reward,
$500 reward,
you have my attention,
absolutely.
A contingent reward
gets you to
focus like this --
narrow vision.
If the answer
is right in front of you --
that's terrific.
You race a lot faster.
But if you have this kind of vision
for a creative conceptual problem,
you're going to blow it.
You're not going to do anything good.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Now, before you economists out there
click to some stock market channel,
a bit more
of the candle experiment,
run in the '60s
by psychologist
Sam Glucksberg.
He offered $5,
(maybe 50 bucks in today's money),
to those who solved it faster than most people,
but $20,
($200 today),
for the fastest time of all.
With eyes on the prize
and time of the essence,
many folks melted the side of the candle
and tried to stick it to the wall --
a quick way,
it turned out,
to watch your hopes melt.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Meanwhile,
Dan Pink took us to
Hunt Valley, Maryland,
to show us
non-material incentives in action.
MAURY WEINSTEIN, CEO, System Source:
Welcome to our Computer Museum.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Maury Weinstein has been
marketing personal computers
since their debut in 1981.
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
The original IBM P.C...
DANIEL PINK:
Oh, man!
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
... with two floppy drives.
Behind us,
the Commodore PET
was very interesting
because it had the lift-up hood.
DANIEL PINK:
So,
it was easy to service.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Is this "the Lisa" or this...?
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
This is the original Macintosh.
"Lisa" is right next door.
PAUL SOLMAN:
The trip down RAM memory lane
reminded us that,
in the high-tech era,
computer sellers have come and gone
as fast as the hardware they have peddled.
Yet, this firm,
System Source,
has grown for three decades,
a key reason, says the CEO,
the decision to drop sales commissions 15 years ago.
He explains,
with a hint of Karl Marx.
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
We find that money often disrupts relationships.
It disrupts customer efforts.
And, sometimes,
it makes the customer feel like a piece of meat,
where you can't trust
the salesperson's recommendations.
And that's a very slippery slope
at that point.
MAN:
This is Jason calling from System Source P.C.s.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Weinstein says
sales spurted 44 percent
as soon as commissions were canned
in 1994.
Profitability rose threefold.
Ed Johnakin,
a system source salesman for 17 years,
says commissions have a downside.
ED JOHNAKIN, Salesman, System Source:
Some salespeople
may push customers into things
that they might not necessarily need.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Did you ever do that?
ED JOHNAKIN:
No, no, no, no!
[they laugh!]
ED JOHNAKIN:
Yes,
maybe once or twice.
PAUL SOLMAN:
So, no commission,
no incentive to sell stuff
customers might be
better off without.
Salesman John Burke.
JOHN BURKE, Salesman, System Source:
I'm not looking to strike it rich
or hit a pot of gold
with one deal and then move on.
I'm looking to foster
a long-term relationship with a customer.
PAUL SOLMAN:
But were we perhaps seeing
System Source
through "Pink"-colored glasses?
DANIEL PINK:
I think System Source
is fundamentally an early adopter
for a very new approach to business,
which basically says that
people have other motivations
besides grabbing that carrot,
that they actually want to do good work.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Speaking of good work,
figured out the
candle answer yet?
With dollar signs in their eyes
and the clock ticking in their heads,
some folks
tack the candle
to the wall.
That falls flat --
no surprise, though,
to Swarthmore psychologist
Barry Schwartz,
who's studied motivation for decades.
BARRY SCHWARTZ, psychologist, Swarthmore College:
Money isn't a natural part of anything we do.
It's not a part of practicing medicine.
You know,
the natural thing to practicing medicine
is healing people.
Getting paid for it
is unnatural,
similarly with law
and with any profession,
teaching.
So, maybe what happens is
that what money does is,
it disconnects people
from the real point
and purpose
of their activity.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Case in point,
Wall Street bonuses,
which,
Schwartz insists,
fueled the crash.
BARRY SCHWARTZ:
It created in people who ran these companies
unbelievable "short term-ism",
because all that mattered
was making the company look good
for the next quarter
or the next year,
so that they would get a huge bonus
in the form of stock options,
which they would then cash in.
And what the consequence was
for the company five years down the road
was of no concern to them --
a disaster.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Now, if cash incentives don't even work
for salespeople,
says Dan Pink,
think how useless they are
in a "right brain world".
Consider Wikipedia,
the world's largest source
of free information
or the free Web browser
Firefox,
open-source projects
created and developed
by users for no pay at all.
And why would labor
the world over
work for free?
SERGE KNYSTAUTAS, open-sourcer:
I think by contributing to open-source communities,
you can get some gratification
and praise
and really give yourself a sense of purpose.
PAUL SOLMAN:
We gathered a group
of open-sourcers in Washington.
CELESTE LYN PAUL, Open-Sourcer:
You're working with people that you like.
You're doing things that you love to do.
And it's just very fulfilling.
So, money isn't the only reason
why somebody might want
to contribute to it.
PAUL SOLMAN:
You're describing a world
that sounds like a marketplace,
but it just doesn't have any money in it.
JOHN YODSNUKIS, Open-Sourcer:
You know,
you need adequate compensation.
You have to live.
You have to survive, OK?
But, if you ask an artist why they became an artist,
a lot of them will say,
I can't do anything else.
I have to do this.
It's the same thing here,
you know?
It's the fulfillment,
the love of doing it
is reason enough.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Yes, admits Pink,
people need enough dollars to survive.
Most of these folks
have day jobs.
But, after that,
humans want autonomy,
a sense of purpose,
mastery.
DANIEL PINK:
We do things because they're interesting.
We do things because we like them.
We do things because we get better at them,
because they contribute to the world,
even if they don't have a payoff
in getting a reward
or satisfying some -- some biological drive.
This is not a plea for a kinder,
gentler approach to business.
This is a plea for saying,
let's wake up!
Let's get past our outdated assumptions,
and let's actually run businesses in concert
with what the science shows
about human performance.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Which brings us back to our experiment,
one of many over the years
that have come to the same conclusion --
128 people took part
in the original candle experiment.
Those offered money
averaged 11 minutes to solve it.
But it turned out that,
counter to the predictions of classical economics,
those people offered no money at all
discovered the solution much faster:
tacking the box
to the wall,
to hold the candle
and catch any dripping wax.
They did it in an average
of just seven-and-a-half minutes,
instead of 11,
and, thus,
the punchline of this story
and Dan Pink's new book:
To succeed in today's global economy,
it's the fire within
that must be lit.
+++
Found online at:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/makingsense_04-15.html#
+++
Transcript from the
PBS NEWSHOUR
ANALYSIS
AIR DATE:
April 15, 2010
SUMMARY
As part of his ongoing coverage
making sense of financial news,business and economics correspondent
Paul Solman
reports on what drives people's behavior
in the modern workplace.
+++
PAUL SOLMAN:
The candle,
box of tacks,
book of matches --
an old puzzle
with a strangely relevant
economic message.
Objective?
Fix the lit candle
to the wall
so no wax hits the table.
Economics:
The faster you do it,
the more money you make.
Punchline:
Conventional economics is wrong,
because the greater the monetary incentive,
the longer the solution takes --
a solution you will see in a bit.
Relevance?
Executive pay
and Wall Street bonuses,
which might not enhance,
but actually retard
"High Performance",
or so says writer
Dan Pink,
once Al Gore's
chief speechwriter.
Pink's first book,
"A Whole New Mind,"
made waves
by arguing that skills
linked to the
creative right side of our brains
dominate
today's global economy,
instead of
left hemisphere thinking.
DANIEL PINK, author,"Drive":
Logical,
linear,
sequential,
analytical,
SAT abilities,
spreadsheet abilities,
and today those abilities are essential --
but they're not enough.
And it's now
abilities characteristic
of the right hemisphere:
artistry,
empathy,
inventiveness,
big-picture thinking.
And that's changed
the game of business, too,
because what it's done is,
it's put a premium
on coming up with
something new,
profoundly new,
iterating something
the world didn't know
it was missing.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Pink's new book, "Drive,"
takes the next step:
You motivate right brain creativity
with more human,
less material
incentives.
DANIEL PINK:
We tend to think that
the way you get people
to perform at a high level is,
you reward
what you want
and punish
what you don't want --
"carrot and stick".
If you do this,
then you get that.
That turns out,
the science says,
to be an extraordinarily effective way
of motivating people
for those routine tasks,
simple,
straightforward,
where there's a right answer.
They end up being
a terrible form
for motivating people
to do creative conceptual tasks.
PAUL SOLMAN:
How does the science show this?
DANIEL PINK:
If you offer me a reward,
$500 reward,
you have my attention,
absolutely.
A contingent reward
gets you to
focus like this --
narrow vision.
If the answer
is right in front of you --
that's terrific.
You race a lot faster.
But if you have this kind of vision
for a creative conceptual problem,
you're going to blow it.
You're not going to do anything good.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Now, before you economists out there
click to some stock market channel,
a bit more
of the candle experiment,
run in the '60s
by psychologist
Sam Glucksberg.
He offered $5,
(maybe 50 bucks in today's money),
to those who solved it faster than most people,
but $20,
($200 today),
for the fastest time of all.
With eyes on the prize
and time of the essence,
many folks melted the side of the candle
and tried to stick it to the wall --
a quick way,
it turned out,
to watch your hopes melt.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Meanwhile,
Dan Pink took us to
Hunt Valley, Maryland,
to show us
non-material incentives in action.
MAURY WEINSTEIN, CEO, System Source:
Welcome to our Computer Museum.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Maury Weinstein has been
marketing personal computers
since their debut in 1981.
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
The original IBM P.C...
DANIEL PINK:
Oh, man!
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
... with two floppy drives.
Behind us,
the Commodore PET
was very interesting
because it had the lift-up hood.
DANIEL PINK:
So,
it was easy to service.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Is this "the Lisa" or this...?
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
This is the original Macintosh.
"Lisa" is right next door.
PAUL SOLMAN:
The trip down RAM memory lane
reminded us that,
in the high-tech era,
computer sellers have come and gone
as fast as the hardware they have peddled.
Yet, this firm,
System Source,
has grown for three decades,
a key reason, says the CEO,
the decision to drop sales commissions 15 years ago.
He explains,
with a hint of Karl Marx.
MAURY WEINSTEIN:
We find that money often disrupts relationships.
It disrupts customer efforts.
And, sometimes,
it makes the customer feel like a piece of meat,
where you can't trust
the salesperson's recommendations.
And that's a very slippery slope
at that point.
MAN:
This is Jason calling from System Source P.C.s.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Weinstein says
sales spurted 44 percent
as soon as commissions were canned
in 1994.
Profitability rose threefold.
Ed Johnakin,
a system source salesman for 17 years,
says commissions have a downside.
ED JOHNAKIN, Salesman, System Source:
Some salespeople
may push customers into things
that they might not necessarily need.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Did you ever do that?
ED JOHNAKIN:
No, no, no, no!
[they laugh!]
ED JOHNAKIN:
Yes,
maybe once or twice.
PAUL SOLMAN:
So, no commission,
no incentive to sell stuff
customers might be
better off without.
Salesman John Burke.
JOHN BURKE, Salesman, System Source:
I'm not looking to strike it rich
or hit a pot of gold
with one deal and then move on.
I'm looking to foster
a long-term relationship with a customer.
PAUL SOLMAN:
But were we perhaps seeing
System Source
through "Pink"-colored glasses?
DANIEL PINK:
I think System Source
is fundamentally an early adopter
for a very new approach to business,
which basically says that
people have other motivations
besides grabbing that carrot,
that they actually want to do good work.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Speaking of good work,
figured out the
candle answer yet?
With dollar signs in their eyes
and the clock ticking in their heads,
some folks
tack the candle
to the wall.
That falls flat --
no surprise, though,
to Swarthmore psychologist
Barry Schwartz,
who's studied motivation for decades.
BARRY SCHWARTZ, psychologist, Swarthmore College:
Money isn't a natural part of anything we do.
It's not a part of practicing medicine.
You know,
the natural thing to practicing medicine
is healing people.
Getting paid for it
is unnatural,
similarly with law
and with any profession,
teaching.
So, maybe what happens is
that what money does is,
it disconnects people
from the real point
and purpose
of their activity.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Case in point,
Wall Street bonuses,
which,
Schwartz insists,
fueled the crash.
BARRY SCHWARTZ:
It created in people who ran these companies
unbelievable "short term-ism",
because all that mattered
was making the company look good
for the next quarter
or the next year,
so that they would get a huge bonus
in the form of stock options,
which they would then cash in.
And what the consequence was
for the company five years down the road
was of no concern to them --
a disaster.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Now, if cash incentives don't even work
for salespeople,
says Dan Pink,
think how useless they are
in a "right brain world".
Consider Wikipedia,
the world's largest source
of free information
or the free Web browser
Firefox,
open-source projects
created and developed
by users for no pay at all.
And why would labor
the world over
work for free?
SERGE KNYSTAUTAS, open-sourcer:
I think by contributing to open-source communities,
you can get some gratification
and praise
and really give yourself a sense of purpose.
PAUL SOLMAN:
We gathered a group
of open-sourcers in Washington.
CELESTE LYN PAUL, Open-Sourcer:
You're working with people that you like.
You're doing things that you love to do.
And it's just very fulfilling.
So, money isn't the only reason
why somebody might want
to contribute to it.
PAUL SOLMAN:
You're describing a world
that sounds like a marketplace,
but it just doesn't have any money in it.
JOHN YODSNUKIS, Open-Sourcer:
You know,
you need adequate compensation.
You have to live.
You have to survive, OK?
But, if you ask an artist why they became an artist,
a lot of them will say,
I can't do anything else.
I have to do this.
It's the same thing here,
you know?
It's the fulfillment,
the love of doing it
is reason enough.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Yes, admits Pink,
people need enough dollars to survive.
Most of these folks
have day jobs.
But, after that,
humans want autonomy,
a sense of purpose,
mastery.
DANIEL PINK:
We do things because they're interesting.
We do things because we like them.
We do things because we get better at them,
because they contribute to the world,
even if they don't have a payoff
in getting a reward
or satisfying some -- some biological drive.
This is not a plea for a kinder,
gentler approach to business.
This is a plea for saying,
let's wake up!
Let's get past our outdated assumptions,
and let's actually run businesses in concert
with what the science shows
about human performance.
PAUL SOLMAN:
Which brings us back to our experiment,
one of many over the years
that have come to the same conclusion --
128 people took part
in the original candle experiment.
Those offered money
averaged 11 minutes to solve it.
But it turned out that,
counter to the predictions of classical economics,
those people offered no money at all
discovered the solution much faster:
tacking the box
to the wall,
to hold the candle
and catch any dripping wax.
They did it in an average
of just seven-and-a-half minutes,
instead of 11,
and, thus,
the punchline of this story
and Dan Pink's new book:
To succeed in today's global economy,
it's the fire within
that must be lit.
+++
Found online at:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/makingsense_04-15.html#
+++
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