The Cultureship Blog

A Book Review of Daniel Pink’s DRIVE.

I’ve just got round to reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive, subtitled The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

He identifies the key drivers to people doing better things (primarily at work) and feeling better about things as Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Autonomy is having a strong degree of personal direction, Mastery is having room to grow and to keep becoming better and Purpose is keeping a balancing act between a relentless profit motive and an eye to a greater good.

The book is premised on some old, typically-American, behaviourist experiments with caged monkeys. That monkeys were seen to take interest in complex problem solving for reasons other than immediate material reward is seen as proof aplenty that humans can have Intrinsic Motivation (for the sake of the doing) as well as Extrinsic Motivation (for the sake of the earning/winning).

-          I would have thought that a host of examples, from specific actions such sport and hobbies, through to generalised concepts like persistence and commitment  might have better established a concept such as Intrinsic Motivation more rapidly, humanely and accurately than caging monkeys. Whatever……

My more fundamental issue with Drive is that is takes an essentially individualised viewpoint of motivation, utterly consistent with American individualism and with the lingering, sensual appeal of the self-starting and supremely self-reliant frontiersman.

As such it is bound to find itself uncomfortably caught between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as an over-emphasis on individualism can only serve to establish a tension with the collective.

Cultureship, which is the Cultureship Practice’s own theorisation of productive motivation, seeks to collapse this unhelpful dualism between the individual and the collective.

Community is a recognition that our strongest instinct is the urge to be part of a productive and protective social unit. Contribution goes on to recognise that the individual components – you and I – need to feel that our best input is encouraged and permitted (this is not 100% dissimilar to Pink’s Mastery but the meaning of Contribution is significantly more social psychological than the more individualised Mastery).

Recognition remains a step too far, still, for many management theorists; it is the deeply human requirement to feel valued, respected and, indeed, loved. Far too often such requirements are discounted into material rewards alone (Pink recognises this issue but does not push through into the full impact of how human relationships must otherwise be), or into “safe” and processional Organisational Development inputs around leadership and management skills.

Pink’s focus is on individual stories and on people being great through building great organisations and a great nation. There are much worse things to which one could aspire.

Cultureship’s view of corporate culture through CCR is of great organisations contributing to a greater human race. First and foremost we argue that the primary drive of a human individual is to be part of a productive community and that people must be encouraged, supported and lauded for their efforts and for their success.

As such, we would be happy if Cultureship were to be known as The Unsurprising Truth About What Motivates Us.