Daniel Pink argues that carrots and sticks don't work. Research shows intrinsic motivation—doing work because it matters—drives real performance and creativity. Businesses stuck on conditional rewards are leaving potential on the table.
There's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does, and here's what science knows. 1, those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. 2, those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. 3, the secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive, the drive to do things for their own sake, the drive to do things because they matter. And here's the best part. If we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does, if we bring our motivation— notions of motivation into the 21st century. If we get past this lazy, dangerous ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, we can solve a lot of those candle problems, and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world.
