Daniel H. Pink

I say, 'Get me some poets as managers.' Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow's new business leaders."--Sidney Harman, CEO Multimillionaire of a stereo components company

Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table__o that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash.

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. "We need to flip that model,_ Ressler told me. __o matter what kind of business you__e in, it__ time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks and outdated, industrial-age thinking.

Motivation 1.0 presumed that humans were biological creatures, struggling to obtain our basic needs for food, security and sex.Motivation 2.0 presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments. That worked fine for routine tasks but incompatible with how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do, and howwe do what we do. We need an upgrade. Motivation 3.0, the upgrade we now need, presumes that humans also have a drive to learn, to create, and to better the world.

...if people do things for lunk-headed, backward-looking reasons, why wouldn't we also do things for significance-seeking, self-actualizing reasons? If we are predictably irrational - and we clearly are- why couldn't we also be predictably transcendent?

Autonomy isn't the opposite of accountability - it's the pathway to it.

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.

Newtonian physics runs into problems at the subatomic level. Down there--in the land of hadrons, quarks, and Schrödinger's cat--things gent freaky. The cool rationality of Isaac Newton gives way to the bizarre unpredictability of Lewis Carroll.

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

I don't think it's a Western thing to really talk about intrinsic motivation and the drive for autonomy, mastery and purpose. You have to not be struggling for survival. For people who don't know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

Never argue. To win an argument is to lose a sale.

The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained. It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship, that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.

A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us. In some sense, we are born to sell.

Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little __ecision latitude._ Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it__ another way of describing autonomy__nd lawyers are glum and cranky because they don__ have much of it.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive__nd autonomy can be the antidote._ _ TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO