RSA Animate - Drive

We don't have the details, but based on what's been presented, here is an alternative interpretation of the results of these studies: Motivation actually works exactly as expected. Greater monetary rewards yield greater motivation and greater performance. It's just that people weight the potential rewards by the probability of actually attaining them. In the experiments, subjects were given an all or nothing proposition: meet the target performance and get the monetary reward or don't and get nothing. The researchers seem to assume that behavior would be entirely driven by the size of the potential reward regardless of the difficulty of achieving it. But it appears that the subjects actually factored in this important variable in making their value judgments. (After all, what value is a reward of 2 months salary if you can't actually get it). We don't know the probabilities so we can't tell, but it may be that the greater the probability weighted reward, the greater the performance. This alternative interpretation is consistent with the results that simple manual labor tasks worked as expected. This might be because the probability of getting the reward was virtually 100% if enough effort was expended. In that case, the probability weighted reward was the same as the potential reward. It would be nice to see the study details. I suspect there is a lot more to it than what has been presented.

Very inspirational and useful; simple yet brilliant! Thanks for doing this.

All the real-world examples Mr. Pink cites are software or IT-related firms, esp regards to doing work for free and giving it away which is such a recent phenomenon that it’s basically a blip in the time of human existence; hardly proven to be enduring and with little ‘en masse’ precedent. Where in 18th century China or 19th century Europe or 15th century Africa did the folks (above subsistence) en masse give away stuff for free? Consistently. This observable human behavior remains a blip-in-time until it proves its endurance across professions, occupations and sectors, cultures, and over time.
Maybe from certain vantage points the world does seem to consist of only IT, of people with good paying jobs, and bright MIT undergrads. But each is hardly representative of American demographics.
Back in the real world, I’d have to work hard (and not for free) to successfully adapt the study’s findings, on pro-motivation work environments, to the real world where most people are older than MIT students, are distracted by daycare scheduling snafus, petulant teens at home, their thickening waists and ill-fitting clothes, their sore middle-aged feet and aching backs, and are bombarded by online ads telling them they’ll have a great sex life if they just buy this car model or shampoo brand.
That’s the demographic of the American workforce.
I think I can make some adaptations and applications of the points in this video…but probably would NOT show this video to that American demographic cuz they’ll see the holes I described above and it will likely cause em to dismiss all the ideas out-of-hand. That’d be a bummer.

Hugely enjoyed this presentation, both the content and the method. But Dan Pink thinks motivating horses is any easier than people! I thought about whether these conclusions of how to motivate employees could be applied to getting the most out of a horse.

A bucket of hard feed (oats, corn etc) has the same kind of effect on a horse as a wedge of cash. They get a glazed look in their eye and it's hard to get them to focus on anything else! So a feed works well for simple tasks, like getting them to come in from the field, but as a tool for training, not so well. If I use feed to try and encourage behaviour I want, they quickly turn their attention to how they can get to the feed without doing what I want, so I stopped using feed as a motivator.

When teaching a horse a new skill, and they get bored really quickly keeping them engaged with new stuff is a good idea otherwise they tend to think up undesirable new stuff of their own, I try to give them to space to work out the puzzle rather than force them into doing what I want. If I want them to move backwards when I put my hand on their chest, I could just push hard until they do what I want, but if I tap them increasingly sharply so it becomes uncomfortable they start looking for ways to make me stop and as soon as they try going backwards, magic, they have made me stop. They learn incredibly quickly when given this kind of autonomy.

Horses also get a sense of satisfaction from being able to perform a task well. Yes I know what that signal means and zoom backwards and I see their confidence grow as they develop more and better skills. (How much is related to what is happening with the human and how much is them I don't know).

OK, struggling a bit with purpose. Horses do know the difference between us making them do stuff because we can (bullying) and asking them to do reasonable tasks for a reason, but again that is to do with the human not the horse.

Horses aren't people, they are really bad at logic or forward thinking. One oat now or a bucket of oats this evening? - the horse will choose the one oat now every time. But they are very sophisticated social animals and I find I learn a lot about people from learning how to engage and motivate horses.

Absolutely great and great way of presenting! I love it. Tx