“The most deeply motivated people not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied, hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves.”   Daniel Pink

Over the last couple of months the Alliance Ambassador’s have been reviewing Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  

In the April Ambassador Update Pink challenged us to think beyond the traditional carrot and stick approach of motivation to what we calls Motivation 3.0, or Type I behavior.  This third motivational driver means we do things because they are interesting, we want to learn and because we want to make a contribution.  

So what drives Type 1 behavior?  Pink introduces the three nutrients to nourish Motivation 3.0: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.  Giving people autonomy over their task, time, technique and the team helps ignite Type I behavior.  

Pink states, “We’re born to be players, not pawns. We’re meant to be autonomous individuals, not individual automatons.  We’re designed to be Type I.  But ouside forces-included the very idea that we need to be managed have conspired to change our default setting and turned us into Type X.”

In addition to autonomy, we must move toward mastery in our personal lives as well as our organizations.  We must desire to get better at something that matters and have the mindset and prepare ourselves for the work necessary to be high performers.  The third nutrient is purpose.  In local government you have a serious advantage in this regard because there is such an intrinsic value to the work you do.  You have the ability to impact people’s lives in which in and of itself is a pretty significant motivator.  

In the May Ambassador Webinar we looked at the nine strategies for offered by Pink to awaken one’s own motivation.  Below is a quick summary of the session:  

1. Give Yourself A Flow Test:  Flow is defined as forgetting yourself in a function or being so absorbed in an activity that you lose your sense of time and place.  In this strategy Pink suggest we set a device, (clock, cellphone, calendar alerts) to go off 40-random times per week.  When it goes off write down:

• What you are doing
• How you’re feeling
• And ask yourself are you in flow?

Then look for patterns that create flow.  Where were you, what were you doing, who were you with?  How might you tweak your current role to bring on more of these optimal experiences?

2.  Ask a Big Question:  Think about your purpose.   What is your sentence?  

3. Keep Asking Yourself the Small Questions:  Real achievement doesn’t happen overnight and the big question isn’t sufficient enough.  At the end of each day, Pink encourages us to ask:

• Was I better today than yesterday?
• Did I do more?
• Did I do it well?
Aim for small improvements, not perfection!

4. Take a “Sagmeister”: This step is named after a designer who said that we spend our first 25-years learning, the next 40 or so working, and the final 25 in retirement.  He asked, “why not snip off five years from retirements and sprinkle them into our working years? Every seven years he closes shop and goes on a 365 day sabbatical.  He reports the ideas generated during that year provided his income for the next seven.  Is this possible in your organization?

5. Give Yourself a Performance Review: Performance reviews often are unproductive because they occur six months after the work is complete.  Pink suggest we give ourselves our own performance reviews:

• Figure out your own personal goals, both learning and performance, and check yourself monthly.
• Be brutally honest with yourself and learn from your mistakes.

Pick a peer that will tell you the truth and hold you accountable.

6. Go Oblique:  Have you ever heard of oblique cards?  These cards contain questions to help push you beyond those mental ruts.  When you have those moments pull out those cards and challenge your thinking.

7. Move Five Steps Closer to Mastery: Deliberate practice is a lifelong effort to improve performance in a specific domain.  It is purposeful, focused and painful.  It isn’t easy:

• Change your performance and set new goals
• Push yourself beyond that comfort zone
• Repeat…Repeat…Repeat
• Get honest feedback
• Focus where you need help
• Prepare yourself for pure exhaustion

8. Take a Page from Webber and a Card from Your Pocket:  Take two 3X5 index cards and on each one answer two questions:  What gets you up in the morning and what keeps you up at night? Flip over the cards and in one sentence answer the questions.  Do your answers give you a sense of meaning?  Is so, use them as a compass checking them periodically to see if they are still true.  If not, what are you going to do about it?

9. Create Your Own Motivational Poster:  Create your own motivational poster to ignite that motivation periodically.  

“The Secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive, our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose” states Pink.  We encourage you over the next month to test out several of this strategies to awaken you own motivation!  

Next Steps:  In the July Ambassador Webinar (July 21, 2010 1:00-2:00ET) we will be looking at the Nine Ways to Improve Your Organization! Start thinking about how you can entrench the three nutrients of Type I behavior into your organization.   Don’t forget to take the free assessment at www.danpink.com/drive.html.