Daniel H. Pink
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.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Science
Studying design has made me a much, much more astute observer of this aspect of business. And I'm working mightily to improve my empathic skills. I've dramatically improved my ability to read facial expressions - and I'm trying to be a better, more attentive listener.Collection: Design
Education in general, and higher education in particular, is on the brink of a huge disruption. Two big questions, which were once so well-settled that we ceased asking them, are now up for grabs. What should young people be learning? And what sorts of credentials indicate they're ready for the workforce?Collection: Education
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.Collection: Independence
One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non-sales selling isn't natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.Collection: Success
Asking "Why?" can lead to understanding. Asking "Why not?" can lead to breakthroughs.Collection: Education
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.Collection: Motivational
Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.Collection: Engagement
The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.Collection: Mind
The three things that motivate creative people - autonomy, mastery, purpose!Collection: People
All of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, something that matters.Collection: Want
For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.Collection: Motivation
Were born to be players, not pawns.Collection: Life
The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind-computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind-creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.These people-artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers-will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys.Collection: Education
Do what you can't and experience the beauty of the mistakes you make.Collection: Mistake
If you want people to perform better, you reward them, right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them. [...] But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.Collection: Motivation
When the reward is the activity itself--deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best--there are no shortcuts.Collection: Rewards
While complying can be an effective strategy for physical survival, it's a lousy one for personal fulfillment. Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but only the latter will get you through the night.Collection: Night
Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.Collection: Leadership
Harness the power of peers.Collection: Power
Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.Collection: Motivation
Money can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, encourage unethical behavior, foster short-term thinking, and become addictive.Collection: Crush
Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.Collection: Inspirational
One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.Collection: Fall
The misuse of extrinsic rewards, so common in business, impedes creativity, stifles personal satisfaction and turns play into work.Collection: Creativity
For many of us, the opposite of talking isn't listening. It's waiting. When others speak, we typically divide our attention between what they're saying now and what we're going to say next - and end up doing a mediocre job at both.Collection: Jobs
As Carol Dweck says, “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.Collection: Mean
To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.Collection: Ends
Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.Collection: Motivation
Carry a notebook and write down examples of good and poor design. After a week, you'll begin to realize that nearly everything is the product of a design decision.Collection: Notebook
The right brain is finally being taken seriously.Collection: Taken
It's nothing short of a whole new brain... animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life.Collection: Thinking
I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.Collection: Leadership
We live in a world of breathtaking material plenty. That has freed hundreds of millions of people from day-to-day struggles and liberated us to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment.Collection: Spiritual
In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.Collection: Leadership
There's an idea out there that salespeople have actually been obliterated by the Internet, which is just not supported by the facts.Collection: Ideas
Especially for fostering creative, conceptual work, the best way to use money as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table so people concentrate on the work.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Inspirational
Create some psychological space between you and your project by imagining you're doing it for someone else or contemplating what advice you'd give to another person in your predicament.Collection: Space
Whenever I meet someone new, I always ask the same question... 'So, what do you do?Collection: Asks
If you create something, whether it's a painting or a company, I think if you care about it, you have some obligation to go out and tell people about it.Collection: Thinking
In the past thirty years we have learned more about the workings of the human brain than in all of previous history.Collection: Knowledge
Most of what we know about sales comes from a world of information asymmetry, where for a very long time sellers had more information than buyers. That meant sellers could hoodwink buyers, especially if buyers did not have a lot of choices or a way to talk back.Collection: Leadership
I think this book, Matthew Desmond's "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.", if you have a friend who is a public official, hand him or her this book. It's that important. And this book raises some serious questions about what kind of country do we want to be.Collection: Country
I tend to pull nuggets out of many books - rather than having a handful of books that serve as guiding lights.Collection: Book
The billable hours is a classic case of restricted autonomy. I mean, you're working on - I mean, sometimes on these six-minute increments. So you're not focused on doing a good job. You're focused on hitting your numbers. It's one reason why lawyers typically are so unhappy. And I want a world of happy lawyers.Collection: Leadership
Now it's easy for someone to set up a storefront and reach the entire world in very modest ways. So these technologies that we thought would dis-intermediate traditional sellers gave more people the tools to be sellers. It also changed the balance of power between sellers and buyers.Collection: Leadership
Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and goodness of others.Collection: Wikipedia
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.Collection: Running