Motivation 3.0– Remote Leadership With Intrinsic Factors
By: Richard Bretzger
Tags: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Business, Remote Work

My Summary on “Drive — The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” from Daniel H. Pink — and how we can learn from that for a remote work setting.

TLDR: Remote leadership requires autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Drive — The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

We no longer live in a stone-age setting where our instincts drive us to do our work, better said: to hunt for food and make sure to survive.

We also no longer live in an industrial factory setting where we algorithmically reproduce simple tasks.

Instead, most of our workforce power comes from heuristic problem solving for creating novel solutions.

And not just since COVID-19, more and more companies realise that they don’t require employees to be physical together at a shared workplace, and even start to see more and more motivational upsides once people are un-caged from their workplace boundaries.

But a remote leadership setting requires an upgraded understanding of what drives people. Management in a remote setting cannot use monitoring and controlling methods that have been present in management since people have been “overseen” in factories during the late 19th century. They require an evolution of management. And we should replace the term management with inspirational leadership. This way, we can focus on intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic rewards or punishment, shift from overseeing single pre-set steps of working towards awareness for the results.

And that is where Daniel H. Pinks “Drive” kicks in, showcasing Motivation 3.0.

Daniel Pink explains in “Drive” different motivational factors from the instinct-driven Motivation 1.0 to the carrot and sticks driven Motivation 2.0, up to the intrinsic driven Motivation 3.0.

His outcome is that significant parts of today’s leadership styles are still based on old school management theories from the industrialisation (Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management). “Manager” too often “manage carrots and sticks”, but should understand that people’s fundamental nature is not to need any external management. Our default setting is to be curious and self-directed.

I cannot stress enough how convinced I am about this default setting of curiosity, and that’s what makes all of Pink’s theories so important to use it as a leadership framework for remote and distributed teams.

What Motivation 2.0 is

With his approach of “scientific management” Frederick Winslow Taylor developed in the early 20th century an “operating software” to manage workers as parts of a complicated machine. “If they did the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine would function smoothly. And to ensure that happened, you simply rewarded the behaviour you sought and punished the behaviour you discouraged”. This approach seemed logical and still is widely adapted.

Minor Update: Motivation 2.1

Mid 20th century showed that treating people solely like cattle doesn’t work well with more complex structures and tasks. Management scientist Frederick Herzberg:

“proposed that two key factors determined how people fared on the job. The first were “hygiene” factors — extrinsic rewards such as pay, working conditions, and job security. Their absence created dissatisfaction, but their presence didn’t lead to job satisfaction. The second were “motivators” — things like enjoyment of the work itself, genuine achievement, and personal growth. These internal desires were what really boosted both satisfaction and performance and were where managers ought to focus their attention.” Pink, Daniel H. Drive (p. 18). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

And with Herzberg and the work of other scientists along with him, some minor refinements could repair weaknesses of the old model. But they “amounted to a modest improvement rather than a thorough upgrade — Motivation 2.1. And so this general approach remained intact.” That’s because it’s already broadly implemented, easy to understand, simple to measure and to enforce.

Open Source: because it’s not Motivation 2.0

Pink compares Microsoft’s Encyclopedia (based on economic interests and proven to be a huge failure) with Wikipedia (open source, solely based on volunteer work) and shows why open source projects work despite there is not a single motivational element based on “Motivation 2.0”.

Open Source: “Flow”, purpose and non-economical rationalities

Unlike some might assume, optimal experiences are mostly not experienced during leisure but during work. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls those optimal moments “Flow”. Studies of open source projects show that participants are driven by “a set of predominantly intrinsic motives — in particular the fun of mastering the challenge of a given software problem and the desire to give a gift to the programmer community.” Giving to the community, contributing to a higher goal gives purpose and drives developers to code for such projects.

We have a desire for purpose.

Same counts for the large market and big movements of not-for-profit or not primary for-profit businesses. Like NPOs, NGOs, L3C (Low-profit limited liability companies) or the social businesses that Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus started to spread around the world. “These are companies that raise capital, develop products, and sell them in an open market but do so in the service of a larger social mission, with the profit-maximisation principle replaced by the social-benefit principle.”

Some countries like Denmark have the legal concept of a “for-benefit organisation”, some U.S have the “B Corporation”.

We don’t work based on economic rationality.

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman pointed out that economics must be understood as the study of human economic behaviour and the human part has not been studied enough until now. Most business management theories are still based on the “hyperrational calculator-brained person”, which is nothing more than a convenient fiction.

Instead, emotional, intrinsic factors override rationality.

Take this well-known example:

“Play a game with me and I’ll try to illustrate the point. Suppose somebody gives me ten dollars and tells me to share it — some, all, or none — with you. If you accept my offer, we both get to keep the money. If you reject it, neither of us gets anything. If I offered you six dollars (keeping four for myself), would you take it? Almost certainly. If I offered you five, you’d probably take that, too. But what if I offered you two dollars? Would you take it? In an experiment replicated around the world, most people rejected offers of two dollars and below. That makes no sense in terms of wealth maximisation. If you take my offer of two dollars, you’re two dollars richer. If you reject it, you get nothing. Your cognitive calculator knows two is greater than zero — but because you’re a human being, your notions of fair play or your desire for revenge or your simple irritation overrides it.” Pink, Daniel H. Drive (p. 25). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Where Carrots and Sticks can’t work

Pink, Daniel H. Drive (p. 57). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Carrots and sticks can work in a special setting though, Pink points out: when prescribed routine tasks need to be performed. Simple, algorithmic tasks that neither needs any form of heuristic thinking, creativity or smartness. Those type of workplaces still exist, no doubt, and they still play a strong part in our economic system. But those jobs will get replaced by machines sooner or later, most of them are done offshore, and the least of them are possible to fulfil in a remote setting. So please excuse my over-simplification: I do not take this group of work into consideration with my thoughts about remote leadership.

What Motivation 3.0 is