RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Motivations are unbelievably interesting and surprisingly different from what we commonly assume about human behavior.

We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as conventional thinking suggests.

There are studies that challenge the idea that rewards produce desired behavior and punishments eliminate unwanted behavior.

The speaker will present two major studies that question traditional reward and punishment motivation schemes.

MIT researchers gave students cognitive challenges and offered three levels of monetary rewards: small, medium, and large cash prizes based on performance.

• For mechanical skill tasks, higher pay led to better performance as expected • For tasks requiring cognitive skill, larger rewards led to poorer performance • This contradicted conventional economic theory

Economists from MIT, University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon—top tier of the economics profession—reached conclusions contrary to traditional economic principles.

The Federal Reserve Bank financed this research, showing mainstream institutions recognizing that reward mechanisms don't work as traditionally believed for complex cognitive tasks.

Researchers replicated the experiment in rural India where monetary rewards were more significant: low performance earned two weeks' salary, medium performance earned one month's salary, high performance earned two months' salary.

• People offered medium rewards performed no better than those offered small rewards • People offered the top reward performed worse than both groups

Higher incentives led to worse performance, replicating the MIT findings despite substantially greater financial motivation.

This finding has been replicated repeatedly by psychologists, sociologists, and economists across different contexts and populations.

• Simple, straightforward tasks with clear 'if-then' relationships • Algorithmic tasks requiring specific rules and correct answers • Carrot and stick motivators work outstandingly for these types

When tasks become complicated and require conceptual and creative thinking, traditional reward motivators demonstrably don't work.

• Money is a motivator, but in a strange way • If you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated • The best use of money is to pay enough to remove money from consideration

Once adequate compensation is provided, three factors lead to better performance and satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed and direct our own lives.

• Traditional management works well for compliance • Self-direction is better for engagement, which modern workers require for sophisticated tasks

The Australian software company Atlassian gives developers one full day per quarter to work on anything they want, in any way they want, with anyone they want—only requirement is showing results to the company.

• This single day of pure autonomy has led to numerous fixes for existing software • It has generated ideas for new products that would otherwise never emerge

Mastery is our urge to get better at stuff, which is inherently satisfying and fun.

People play musical instruments on weekends despite economic irrationality—they don't gain money or mates, but find satisfaction in improvement.

• Linux powers one out of four corporate servers in Fortune 500 companies • Apache powers the majority of web servers • Wikipedia demonstrates massive voluntary contribution • All created by people giving away highly skilled work for free

Technically sophisticated, highly skilled people work on these projects during discretionary time for free because of challenge, mastery, and the desire to make a contribution.

• More organizations seek transcendent purpose • Purpose makes work better and attracts better talent

• When profit motive becomes unmoored from purpose, bad things happen • Results include crappy products, lame services, and uninspiring workplaces

• Skype founder: 'Our goal is to be disruptive, but in the cause of making the world a better place' • Steve Jobs: 'I want to put a ding in the universe'

Flourishing companies—whether profit, not-for-profit, or hybrid—are animated by purpose motive and blur the boundaries between profit and purpose.

• We are purpose maximizers, not only profit maximizers • We care deeply about mastery • We want to be self-directed

Traditional motivation assumes people are like horses—slower, smaller, better smelling—responding only to carrot and stick incentives.

When we treat people like people and move beyond carrot and stick ideology, we can look at the science and build accordingly.

Building organizations and work lives around autonomy, mastery, and purpose makes us better off and has the promise to make our world better.