Leadership Summit | Dan Pink

August 6, 2010 in Leadership with 1 Comment

These are the key thoughts from Dan Pink’s session at the Leadership Summit that grabbed my attention. Dan is the author of Drive, a book I’ve highlighted here and here in recent weeks.

  • “If-then rewards work really well for simple tasks. However, they don’t work very well for more complicated creative tasks.”
  • “One of the problems that we have in our organizations is that we make the wrong assumptions about people.”
  • “One of the false assumptions is that people are machines.”
  • Another false assumption is that “human begins are blobs.”
  • “Our nature is to be active and engaged.”
  • People need: autonomy, mastery and purpose
  • “Management wasn’t delivered to us from God.”
  • “Management is a technology designed to get compliance.”
  • “We want engagement. Management doesn’t lead to engagement. Self-direction leads to engagement.”
  • “Give people autonomy over their time, team, task and technique. That leads to engagement.”
  • “Making progress is the single greatest motivator at work.”
  • “We want challenge.”
  • “Performance reviews are not authentic conversations.”
  • “I think we are seeing the limits of the profit motive. The profit-motive is a good thing, but it’s not the only thing.”
  • “The only way people will be enduringly motivated is if they’re animated by something bigger than themselves.”
  • “I’m convinced that anything good in life began with a conversation. That’s what changes the world.”

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  1. Leadership Summit Notes | TonyMorganLive.com - August 7, 2010

    [...] Dan Pink – Dan comes at the topic of motivation and drive from a scientific research perspective, but there are so many parallels to what Scripture has to say about equipping God’s people to use their gifts to do the work of God. [...]