I am enthusiastic about Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive, and have been discussing it a lot lately, but I had some questions for Pink:

Q. Why don’t more companies adopt and support intrinsic motivation? (Pink calls it “Motivation 3.0″)

Q. Most executives know that it is more powerful than the old carrot-and-stick approaches — “Motivation 2.0.”  So why not rely on it?

I emailed Pink and got a quick response. His thinking is that “folklore” was a critical factor. People have been brought up on Motivation 2.0 - the carrot and the stick — and told it is the way to drive work. Leaders rely on that.

I think it goes even further. I think Motivation 3.0 - intrinsic motivation, which comes from within — requires executives to trust people to do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, and executives are not really comfortable trusting others.

A move to 3.0 requires of a leap of faith.

Fortunately, recent advances in neuroscience make the leap smaller because this research shows how our brains respond differently to 2.0 than 3.0.

As Pink notes, intrinsic motivation literally stimulates different portions of the brain that are more closely associated with independent work.

This is the same body of research Cerebyte uses to create and sustain people’s motivation to change.

I’m excited about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surpising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Pink thinks “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”  Intrinsic motivation, according to Pink, is what really motivates people. He calls autonomy, mastery, and purpose THE motivating forces, and the old carrot-and-stick approach “a lazy, dangerous ideology.”

Numerous good studies have shown that people want autonomy at work, and that it’s a better motivator than money. 

Drive is consistent with Cerebyte’s approach. We focus on the knowledge of an organization’s positive deviants. Social good is a powerful motivator for these workers. They’re driven from within and by the pleasure of doing things they care about — and that really matter, both to them and to their organization.

By William Seidman

We were glad to learn that Richard Kramer of ORG, Organizational Resource Group, likes our book and was impressed with our research, data, methods, and results.  We’re happy to share his writeup with you:

Strategy to Action in 10 Days-Creating High Performance Organizations

Are you a leader charged with making a significant organizational change? Is there a lot resting on your ability to make changes within your organization in a short period of time that have holding power?  Have you been disappointed with change efforts in the past that haven’t produced desired results?

 Imagine a way of approaching organizational change that starts from understanding how your best performers do what they do and securing that knowledge.

 Traditional efforts often start with new concepts and approaches from experts outside the organization.

 Imagine an approach that requires mid management to have a central role in the change effort. An approach that provides the support and structure to enable them to consistently coach and support staff across an organization, even across a country, in a consistent manner.

 Traditional approaches often leave the mid management out as observers, with minimal ownership of an initiative.

 Imagine a change management approach that has an accountability aspect that allows a leader to know, on one computer screen, how a national deployment is going. 

 Traditional approaches have struggled with timely and meaningful accountability.

 We are pleased to introduce to our friends and clients a new book by William Seidman, Ph.D. and Michael McCauley of Cerebyte called Strategy to Action in 10 Days- Creating High Performance Organizations.  We, at ORG, have worked with William and Michael for several years, working to shape strategies of securing knowledge and using this to improve organizational performance.  In their new book, based on a fascinating combination of science, they discuss an approach to improving an organization’s performance that is truly unique and effective.  If you are looking to stay ahead of the performance curve, I encourage you to add this book to your library. 

– Richard Kramer, Organizational Resource Group

It’s always good to be reviewed well, and we appreciate it.

Richard Kramer

We’re working on several leadership programs right now, leading an organization through a transformation.

We have built decent best practices that are different from the usual. We’ve been emphasizing “authenticity.”

When we talk about deploying the best practices, though, we get stuck.

After a lot of conversation and thought, we realized that the leaders who most need enhanced leadership capabilities are executives most convinced they are already great leaders. This mindset  is a good part of why they are powerfully resistant to considering their own need to grow and change.

Ironically, the best leaders are those who seek  out —  and are open to –  growth opportunities. They’re easy to work with but don’t need the development.

How do you you engage “leaders” who are so resistant to learning from others?

I’m working with one of our corporate customers to change their culture and business processes.

During ten weeks I’ve worked with 300 managers. The program has made incredible progress but isn’t complete.

I met with some of the key managers; some were disappointed in the progress we (and they) were making.  These managers said although they recognized that the company culture had changed for the better, some people hadn’t fully bought in.

How many people weren’t yet on board? 15 out of 300 — a pretty good ratio (95% success rate)  for any organization!         

Many managers have what I came to describe as an expectation of perfection. In their view, a change can be called successful only if it is total.

We talked about the progress that has been made and the imperfectability of change.

They relaxed and were able to see the good side. In fact, change that lasts is often slow and usually “imperfect,” but progress is definitely possible.

By William Seidman

Ever wish your company had come with an instruction manual? Michael McCauley and I have written a book, Advantage Media has published it, and we’re excited. You can buy  “Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance Organizations”  directly from us, in bookstores, or on Amazon. There’s a Kindle edition, too.

Join our Facebook page and come with us as we travel to promote our book.

Ron Nakamoto, CEO of Strategic Financial, has praise:  ”I recommend Strategy to Action in 10 Days to any person interested in creating a high performance organization. It clearly illustrates how to break from the status quo and create a truly sustainable change. It is as much a practical guide as it is a game changer.”                              

We’re as excited about our book as we are about the many people who are using it to create real, lasting, and positive change in their organizations.

I’ve been reading a lot about augmented reality  lately. It seems to be everywhere. Augmented reality — the term was coined by Thomas Caudell in 1990 — is a view of the real environment merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated images. It’s likely that you’ve already experienced augmented reality.  Have you watched a football game recently? That thick yellow first down line that they draw on the field is a simple example of augmented reality. Have you ever driven in a car with a “heads up” display where the speed and other info are projected onto the windshield? That’s another example.

More sophisticated applications are currently in production or being developed. For example, there’s an iPhone app which overlays the phone’s camera image with your longitude, latitude, bearing, elevation and angle to the horizon. Another iPhone app uses the camera image and overlays it with information on each nearby bar. Interesting augmented reality apps can be found at http://mashable.com/2009/12/05/augmented-reality-iphone/.  

These are so many forms of persuasive technology, each designed to change peoples’ attitudes and behaviors. Could this concept be applied in other ways? I would love to have an app that lists the contents of my file cabinet when I point my phone at it. Or let’s say that you’re a project manager. What about an app that displays the progress, key risks, costs and punch list for a project when you point your camera phone at the construction site?

It seems to me that the applications are nearly limitless. How could persuasive technology that employs augmented reality be used in your business?

One — but only if the organization really wants to change. 

At a recent holiday party I chatted with someone who had been an executive in a family-owned ship repair company — successful for fifty years — which had finally failed.

The business had begun to decline quickly because of changing world market conditions. The owners knew their business was in trouble and brought in high-priced consultants to make recommendations.

Each recommendation was rejected as “not understanding our business.” I asked this person if the owners had really wanted to change. His frank response was,  ”Not really.”  They believed that there was a need to change and their numbers reinforced it. But in their hearts,  they really wanted to stay just the same. The desire to do nothing was stronger than the need to change.

I recently had a discussion with an executive of a high tech company about the difference between going toward something and going away from something.

His observation was that going toward something is much more powerful than leaving something.

The ship repair company’s executives were being told to go away from their comfort zone but not, in their minds, toward something promising or exciting. They didn’t have a vision, or even a picture, of what they were moving toward.

They might have been able to successfully change  had they had framed their thinking as going toward something desirable. Moving away from the old ways wasn’t enough. A positive, motivating vision was missing, and the company — like so many others that couldn’t change – is now gone.

Clive Thompson, writing for Wired Magazine, recently explored the idea that the act of daydreaming is a crucial part of problem solving. This is an interesting notion, since most work environments are designed to minimize or eliminate daydreaming. Instead, Thompson suggests that tools and applications should be developed to encourage mental drift.

 A recent study by Dr. Michael Kane of the University of North Carolina found that our minds drift away from our tasks fully one-third of the time. His study further suggests that when your mind drifts off, it is actually doing important data-storage work.  Brain scans indicate that, when you are daydreaming,  the mind is actually using the prefrontal cortex –  the part of the brain used for problem solving. Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara, believes that an idling mind is likely doing deeply creative work.

So how is all this related to persuasive technology? Modern productivity software is designed to minimize mental drift. Often we are so focused on completing tasks, checking off to-do lists and scheduling meetings that we don’t have time to just sit and think.

How about designing software that changes our attitude and behavior about drifting — software that actually optimizes daydreaming? I find this to be a truly inspired idea. Using persuasive technology, we could design software that actually encourages people to make notes about their daydreams. What about software that actually encourages daydreaming? In its crudest form, maybe the application pings you from time to time to see if your mind is wandering. If it is, then the application gives you an opportunity to capture what you’re thinking about in a few simple notes. You could then go back and review your notes at a later time. This might spur additional ideas that can be used to enhance your problem- solving ability and actually improve your productivity.

Maybe this represents the next generation of persuasive technology. What do you think?

We’ll be presenting two papers at the International Society for Performance Improvement’s 2010 Annual Conference in San Francisco April 19-22, 2010.

ISPI is a good forum for people interested in learning how organizations can improve themselves, and its conferences bring in a wide ranging group of organizational development, training, and other professionals, both from inside organizations and as outside consultants.

The topics we’ll be discussing:

Persuasive Technology: A New Paradigm for Maximizing Organizational Performance — on the incorporation of the neuroscience of learning into technology and how this can lead to faster and more far-reaching organizational change on a larger scale than previously thought possible. Mike McCauley and I will present this paper.

The Importance of Courage in Leading Change: Creating Courageous Organizations — on the times and ways that leaders need to be courageous when leading a change effort, and how you can test for courageous leadership before you begin a change. Rick Grbavac and I will present this paper.

We hope many of you will be able to come to our sessions at the ISPI Conference in April.