Are we running our businesses the wrong way?
In a recent TED presentation author Dan Pink makes an excellent case that we are running our businesses and managing our talent the wrong way.
Pink points to an abundance of evidence showing that common business approaches to reward and incent performance, such as sales commissions and employee bonuses, actually result in worse performance. The reason? Incentives narrow focus, when what we actually need is broader conceptual and creative thinking to solve the problems faced in our complex business environments. Performance incentives work well only for basic mechanical activities where there is a simple set of rules and a clear objective.
As a solution, Pink indicates that we should be focusing on intrinsic motivators (rather than extrinsic motivators) to generate high performance. The intrinsic motivators he proposes are:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
Pink states “pay people adequately and fairly, get the issue of money off the table, and then focus on autonomy”. He then references a number of case studies, including Australian software company Atlassian, where team members work on whatever they choose for 20% of their time, leading to creative products and solutions for the company.
I recommend watching Dan Pink’s presentation below, where he discusses the above points in more detail. As a bonus, Pink is also a very entertaining presenter. The video clip is around 18 minutes long.
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