BOOK REVIEW

Name of the book : Drive – The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us

(A New York Times Bestseller)

Author : Daniel H. Pink

Publisher : Canongate Books (2010)

ISBN : 978 1 84767 768 6

Introduction

The topic choosen for my Research Paper 1 is ‘Motivation’. The Research Paper 1 will explain

about motivation in company or organization – what exactly motivates people to do something.

‘Drive’ the book by Daniel H. Pink (2010) has been choosing to enlighten me explain and

understand about human motivation especially the motives of people in the workplace. This book

gives different thoughts about motivation and trying to tell us that all this time we have been in

the wrong direction of how to motivate people and explain the new paradigm of motivation that

the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to

direct their own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world

(Pink, 2010). The fully explanation about factors that motivates people, types of motivation, and

also some effective ways to motivates people at work that can enhance their work performances

will be explained in this book.

Topic of motivation is quite interesting for me because I myself want to know more about

motivation, not only the motivation theory but also other cogitation about it. By learning about

motivation, we can know about everything that can motivate people to do something, especially

when people got some assignments or tasks from their boss, teacher, or even parents. We also

can understand how to motivate people, influence and encourage them to work at their best that

would increase the performance of company or organization.

Motivation also important topic beside the leadership, organizational culture or other topic from

Organizational Behaviour and Work (OBW), because this topic also relate to others topic on

OBW such as leadership, communication, job satisfaction, job performance and so on. Compare

to the other book such as leadership, performance appraisal, organizational change or any topic

from OBW, I find that motivation is the most interesting and important topic because motivation

is about what motivates people to do something. Every company has its own way to motivate

their employees to do their job at the best. In order to reach or increase the company

performance, top managers should boost their employee’s by giving such as rewards, build good

communication, improve the leadership skill, and others. By learning about motivation, we can

find out what motivates people, because motivation can affects people’s performance.

There are five parts in the research paper 1. Starting from introduction about motivation,

summary about the‘Drive’ book, and critique about the book, insight or implications of the book,

and the last part is comments about the book.

Summary of the Book

Book that I have selected is ‘Drive – The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us’ by Daniel

H. Pink (2010). This book is a New York Times Bestseller that was published in New York 2010

by Canongate Books. Great Britain 2010 by Financial Times Prentice Hall. The Drive book is

divided into three parts. Each part is divided into some chapters which have specific topic. Part

one has four chapter, part two has three chapters, and part three is the toolkit to help the readers

define their motivation.

This Drive book begins with a thought experiment, one that requires going back in time – to the

days when John Major was Britain’s prime minister, Barack Obama was a skinny young law

prfessor, internet connections were using dial-up only, and a blackberry was still just a fruit. This

experiment give a conclusion result that human and other animals ate to sate their hunger, drank

to quench their thirst, and copulated to satisfy their carnal urges. If biological motivations came

from within, their second drive came from without the rewards and punishments the environment

delivered for behaving in certain ways. Reward can deliver a short-term boost – for a few hours,

but the effect wears off and worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the

project.

Part One of this book which is ‘A New Operating System’ which will look at the flaws in our

reward and punishment system and propose a new way to think about motivation. Chapter 1

examines how the prevailing view of motivation is becoming incompatible with many aspects of

contemporary business and life. Our social operating system consists of a set of assumption

about human behavior. This system is about how we organize what we do, how we think about

what we do, and how we do what we do. Chapter 2 reveals the seven reasons why carrot-and-

stick extrinsic motivators often produce the opposite of what they set out to achieve. Chapter 2a

shows the special circumstances when carrots and sticks actually can be effective. Actually

carrots and sticks here means do the task then will get reward. Those seven reasons are: carrots

and sticks system can extinguish intrinsic motivation, can diminish performance, can crush

creativitu, can crowd out good behavior, can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical

behavior, can become addictive, and can foster short-term thinking. Chapter 3 is about ‘Type X

‘and introduce the ‘Type I’ behavior, a way of thinking and an approach to business grounded in

the real science of human motivation and powered by our third drive – our innate need to direct

our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to o better by ourselves and our world. ‘Type

X’ behavior is fueled more by extrinsic desires than intrinsic ones. It concerns itself less with the

inherent satisfaction of an activity and more with the external rewards to which that activity

leads. While ‘Type I’ behavior is fueled more by intrinsic desires than extrinsic ones. If you want

to strengthen your organizations, get beyond your decade of underachievement, and address the

inchoate sense that something’s gone wrong in your business, your lives, and your world, so you

need to move from ‘Type X’ to ‘Type I’.

Part Two examine the tree elements of that ‘Type I’ behavior and show how individuals and

organizations are using them to improve performance and deepen satisfaction. Those three

elements are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Chapter 4 explore autonomy, the desire to be self-

directed. There are four essential of autonomy: the task, the time, the technique, and the team.

Chapter 5 explore mastery, the urge to get better and better at what we do. There are three laws

of mastery: mastery is a mindset, mastery is a pain, and mastery is an asymptote. Then chapter 6

explore purpose, the yearning to be part of something larger than ourselves. Purpose include

goals, words, and policies.

Part Three, the ‘Type I Toolkit’, is a comprehensive set of resources to help you create settings

in which ‘Type I’ behavior can flourish. Here we can find everything from dozens of exercises to

awaken motivation in yourself and others, to discussion questions for your book club, to a

supershort summary of drive that will help us fake our way through a cocktail party. This toolkit

is the guide to taking the ideas in this book and putting them into action. There are five main type

toolkit: type I for Individuals, type I for Organizations, the Zen of Compensation (paying people

the type I way), type I for parens and educators, the type I Fitness Plan.

Critique of the Book

This Drive book is about the new and paradigm-shattering about drive, the surprising truth about

what motivates us. This book is the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world

is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better

by ourselves and ourworld. This book is considering as a book which easy to read and

understand, give a clear and in depth understanding about other side of motivation. The author

exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does – and how that

affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick

approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it is precisely the wrong way to motivate

people for today’s challenges.

The aim of this book is to issue a bold and persuasive call to bring our understanding of human

motivation out of the realm of folklore and into the realm of science. By demonstrate in an

entertaining way how self-motivated rewards provide their own behavioural alchemy, exposing

the mismatch between what science knows and business does. The interesting part of this book is

the author try to connect the motivation with social businesses with giving example the Nobel

Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus – with the profit maximization princple replaced by the

social-benefit principle. (Pink, 2010:24).

This book also gives an interesting main topic for every chapter that linked to all chapters about

motivation. It started from chapters that explaining about some experiments conducted by two

scientist, Harlow and Deci to know whether the carrots and sticks method still work, then follow

by describe about new direction of motivation that leads to an understanding on changes in

motivation perception. The book was also design for person who has no background knowledge

about motivation so the readers would learned something from this book. The author gives the

ilusstration with numerous example that is easy to understand, and he also provide the toolkit for

us to do such a motivation assessment.

Insights / Implications

Drive book by Daniel H pink is a must read book for managers, organization and all people in

the workplace. Because this book is giving explanation that motivates people at work by give

rewards is quite wrong. Here, he describe that the introduction of reward will disrupt

performance, once the reward decrease and the people become lazy. But the people who do some

task but did not introduced to anykind of reward, they will work stable.

As Deci (1971) revealed that human mtivation seemed to operate by laws that ran counter to

what most scientist and citizens believed. Rewards – especiall cold, hard cash – intensified

interest and enhanced performance.

Comments

From reading, analyzing, summarizing and critiquing ‘The Leadership Book”, I become aware

that to be successful leader takes a lot of understanding, research and experience about it. I get a

The credentials or areas of expertise of the authors were about the levels of employee motivation

is influenced by the fulfillment of the four drives emotional needs of employees by organization

and manager. The author used appropriate methods by doing observations and surveys to some

companies to gather the evidence for backup their opinion. The evidences that used by the

authors were accurate because the evidences came from observations and surveys that authors

had done about the fulfillment of four drives emotional. The authors used some cases in some

companies to prove their opinion about the connection between employee motivation and four

drives emotional needs fulfilled by manager and organization.

This article has explained clearly about the employee motivation, the drives that can improve

motivation and the levers of organization and manager in order to fulfill their employee’s

emotional needs supported by some accurrate evidences, hence the authors can lead the reader to

the same conclusion. They also build a logical argument which states that “employee motivation

is influenced by a complex system of managerial and organizational factors, a motivated

workforce can boost company performance”, and there is no evidence that would support a

counter-argument, because all evidences that authors had used and explained was support their

logical argument.

Overall, the authors were successful in making their point. They described their opinions and

arguments encouraged by evidences that can prove their thoughts and leads the reader to have

same conclusion. This article closed by their logical argument conclusion which is is still valid

thru their article used evidences that was not outdated and their data was real, gathered from

observations and surveys to some companies.

LEARNING JOURNAL

Introduction

The intention of this learning journal is to narrate and demonstrate my learning experience from

class, working environment and self-directed learning. Writing a learning journal was to help us

to remember what we have learned or studied during our study period and review it back at the

end of our study period. In learning journal we write about our experience and knowledge that

we have gain from certain subject during our study period. This journal that I write will cover the

entire subject which I have learned during my Master degree studies. By writing a journal, it

makes me easily to revise the subject that I have studied and monitor my practice performance.

Starting with learning episode, contain with eight (8) entries which discuss what I have learned

during class, working experience, and self-directed learning followed by detail feedback and

outcomes that I get from my learning experiences and comments about book and learning

journal.

Learning Episodes

Entry 1: Motivation

From this chapter, I have learned about many things that can motivate and force people to do

something. Motivation exist in many places such as at home, at school or at workplace.

Motivation at home for example if mother asked her daughter to do some tasks at home such as

wash the dishes and clothes, cleaning the room, etc. then if the tasks finished, daughter will

receive a gift. That gift is what motivates that girl to do some work. At school motivation also

exist, if students go to school it must be something that forces them to go, either their parents

push them to go to school or they just want it, because a need of education or meeting friends.

Motivation is very important in the company or organization, because if the company want

achieve its goals, they should motivate their employees. Motive or drive is considered the

internal force or need which produces external behaviour.

I also learned some motivation theories such as Maslow’s Hierarchy Needs (which includes

physiological needs, safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs, and self-

actualization); Expectancy Theory by Vroom (three major components of this theory are

expectancy, instrumentality, valence); Theory X (most people are lazy, need to be controlled,

need to be motivated), Theory Y (people like to work, have self-control, motivate

themselves,etc.); and many others motivation theories.

Entry 2: Reward System

This topic also interesting for me because it relates to motivation. As I learned from my class that

reward system can be used to motivate employees, such as by giving salary, bonus, and so on.

Organization should provide and offer reward system in order to enhance their employee’s

performance and company productivity. When I did the observation and interview at a company

in Indonesia for my research paper two, I found out that the salary, allowances, incentives are

used to motivate their employees in line with giving them reward such as bonus. Based on my

analysis, increase in salary can improve company productivity. Every company have different

reward system, but the point is the same, to motivate their employees to work harder in order to

achieving company’s goals and objectives.

Entry 3: Communication

From what I have learned on my class, communication also one of important role in the

organizational learning and decision making because without a good communication they cannot

communicate the problem exist in the organization, so they also cannot make a good decision

and there will be a conflict amongst people in the organization. It happened to me few years ago

when I used to join a student organization at my previous college, there was a miscommunication

that lead to a conflict between the leader of organization with the member. We could not

communicate each other, so when the organization have to make a decision about some problem,

we could not solve it properly. At class I got more knowledge about communication,

communication not only the direct speaking amongst people, but also all media such internet,

television, and others.

Entry 4: Merger and Acquisition

At my Corporate Financial Management class, I have learned a lot from the class about this

topic. In this era when the level of competition among the companies was increasingly stringent,

companies are required to improve their business excellence strategy. This strategy can be

achieved either by improving the condition of the company, by improving management

strategies, with emphasis on the market for the product, market share and profits, as well as with

its external expansion. External expansion can be done with merger and acquisition. Merger can

leads to practice of hostile bid. In addition, it may offers large amount of money but it s nothing

if we compare with the result in the future. Billion could raised thrice than the first time bid.

Merger and acquisition can affect the firm’s performance which either can be the successful

merger company or the failure one. All of merged and acquired companies have their own

reasons when they decided to merge or acquire their company. For example, Nokia Corporation

and Siemens AG, which have been merging into a new company named Nokia Siemens Network

(NSN). Nokia and Siemens are the leading company for electronic devices since the beginning of

2000, we can imagine how success it would be when they are merged each other. Expert in

research and development, creating such a great and advance in technology and innovation,

value added for their employee perfomance, great fluctuation for their share in the stock market,

escalating their marketing capabilities in order to promote their product worldwide and increase

their sales.

Entry 5: Investment

Investment is one of difficult topic during my master study, but from this lesson I have learned

and know more about investment, how to choose and rank good and prospect project that will

lead to a successful project in the future. The criteria that might use to rank the projects are the

six capital budgeting analysis methods, the net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR),

modified rate of return (MIRR), payback period, discounted payback period, and probability

index (PI).

The Net Present Value (NPV) method is the best way to compare all of the projects. Because this

method relies on discounted cash flow techniques by finding the present values of cash flows

discounted at the cost of capital. Payback period is the method that analyze how many years does

the project will recover its initial cost. The IRR is the discount rate that makes the NPV of an

investment zero. The PI can be considered by separating the present value of an investment’s

future cash flow divided by its initial cost.

Entry 5: Key Resources, Capabilities, Core Competencies

I learned about this topic in my Business Policy class. Every company have its own key

resources, capabilities, and core competencies. Those three components are very important for

the company, because it will lead the company to its competitive advantage. Key resources are

divided into two types, tangible and intangible resources. Tangible resources includes financial,

organizational, physical, and technological resources, while intangible resources includes human,

innovation, and reputational resources.

We learned about Apple Inc. a biggest computer and technology company. At class we asked to

define the key resources, capabilities, and core competencies of Apple Inc.

Feedback and Reflection

From eight (8) entries that I presented in learning episodes part, there will be some feedback

Outcomes and New Learning

In learning episodes mentioned above, there are eight (8) entries which I get from my learning

Concluding Comments

I find that compiling learning journal is not an easy like what I thoughts. Create learning journal

References

Edward L. Deci (1971): “Effects of Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation”,

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 18, p.114.

Pink, Daniel H (2010): Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, New York:

Canongate Books.