Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Read online

  Over the last thirty years, through both their scholarship and mentorship, Deci and Ryan have established a network of several dozen SDT scholars conducting research in the United States, Canada, Israel, Singapore, and throughout Western Europe. These scientists have explored self-determination and intrinsic motivation in laboratory experiments and field studies that encompass just about every realm—business, education, medicine, sports, exercise, personal productivity, environmentalism, relationships, and physical and mental health. They have produced hundreds of research papers, most of which point to the same conclusion. 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.

  SDT is an important part of a broad swirl of new thinking about the human condition. This constellation includes, perhaps most prominently, the positive psychology movement, which has reoriented the study of psychological science away from its previous focus on malady and dysfunction and toward well-being and effective functioning. Under the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman, positive psychology has been minting legions of new scholars and leaving a deep imprint on how scientists, economists, therapists, and everyday people think about human behavior. One of positive psychology’s most influential figures is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whom I mentioned earlier. Csikszentmihalyi’s first book about “flow” and Seligman’s first book on his theories (which argued that helplessness was learned, rather than innate, behavior) appeared in the same year as Deci’s book on intrinsic motivation. Clearly, something big was in the air in 1975. It’s just taken us a generation to reckon with it.

  The broad assortment of new thinkers includes Carol Dweck of Stanford University and Harvard’s Amabile. It includes a few economists—most prominently, Roland Bénabou of Princeton University and Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich—who are applying some of these concepts to the dismal science. And it includes some scholars who don’t study motivation per se—in particular, Harvard University’s Howard Gardner and Tufts University’s Robert Sternberg—who have changed our view of intelligence and creativity and offered a brighter view of human potential.

  This collection of scholars—not in concert, not intentionally, and perhaps not even knowing they’ve been doing so—has been creating the foundation for a new, more effective, operating system. At long last, the times may be catching up to their work.

  THE POWER OF THE ALPHABET

  Words matter, of course, but so do letters. Case in point: Meyer Friedman. You’ve probably never heard of him, but you almost certainly know his legacy. Friedman, who died in 2001 at the ripe old age of ninety, was a cardiologist who for decades ran a bustling office in San Francisco. In the late 1950s, he and fellow physician Ray Rosenman began noticing similarities in their patients who were prone to heart disease. It wasn’t only what these patients ate or what genes they inherited that affected their susceptibility to coronary trouble. It was also how they led their lives. These patients, Friedman noted, demonstrated:a particular complex of personality traits, including excessive competition drive, aggressiveness, impatience, and a harrying sense of time urgency. Individuals displaying this pattern seem to be engaged in a chronic, ceaseless, and often fruitless struggle—with themselves, with others, with circumstances, with time, sometimes with life itself.2

  These people were significantly more likely to develop heart disease than other patients—even those who shared similar physical attributes, exercise regimens, diets, and family histories. Looking for a convenient and memorable way to explain this insight to their medical colleagues and the wider world, Friedman and Rosenman found inspiration in the alphabet. They dubbed this behavioral pattern “Type A.”

  Type A behavior stood in contrast to—natch—Type B behavior. Unlike their horn-honking, foot-tapping counterparts, who suffered from “hurry sickness,” people displaying Type B behavior were rarely harried by life or made hostile by its demands. In their research, Friedman and Rosenman found that Type B people were just as intelligent, and frequently just as ambitious, as Type A’s. But they wore their ambition differently. Writing about the Type B person (and using the male-centered language common in the day), the cardiologists explained, “He may also have a considerable amount of ‘drive,’ but its character is such that it seems to steady him, give confidence and security to him, rather than to goad, irritate, and infuriate, as with the Type A man.”3 One key to reducing deaths from heart disease and improving public health, therefore, was to help Type A’s learn to become a little more like Type B’s.

  Nearly fifty years later, this nomenclature remains. The two letters help us understand a complex web of behaviors—and guide us toward a better and more effective way to live.

  Around the same time that Friedman and Rosenman were making their discovery, another American was pushing frontiers of his own. Douglas McGregor was a management professor at MIT who brought to the job an interesting combination of experiences. He’d earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in psychology (rather than in economics or engineering). And in contrast to most of his colleagues, he’d actually run an institution. From 1948 to 1954, he was president of Antioch College.

  Drawing on his understanding of the human psyche, as well as his experience as a leader, McGregor began rethinking the conventions of modern management. He thought that the problem with corporate leadership wasn’t so much its execution as its premises. Beginning with a speech in 1957, and later in a groundbreaking book called The Human Side of Enterprise in 1960, McGregor argued that those running companies were operating from faulty assumptions about human behavior.

  Most leaders believed that the people in their organizations fundamentally disliked work and would avoid it if it they could. These faceless minions feared taking responsibility, craved security, and badly needed direction. As a result, “most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, and threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.” But McGregor said there was an alternative view of employees—one that offered a more accurate assessment of the human condition and a more effective starting point for running companies. This perspective held that taking an interest in work is “as natural as play or rest,” that creativity and ingenuity were widely distributed in the population, and that under the proper conditions, people will accept, and even seek, responsibility.4

  To explain these contrasting outlooks, McGregor mined the back end of the alphabet. He called the first view Theory X and the second Theory Y. If your starting point was Theory X, he said, your managerial techniques would inevitably produce limited results, or even go awry entirely. If you believed in the “mediocrity of the masses,” as he put it, then mediocrity became the ceiling on what you could achieve. But if your starting point was Theory Y, the possibilities were vast—not simply for the individual’s potential, but for the company’s bottom line as well. The way to make business organizations work better, therefore, was to shift management thinking away from Theory X and toward Theory Y.

  Once again, the nomenclature stuck—and McGregor’s approach soon became a staple of management education.d A picture may be worth a thousand words—but sometimes neither is as potent as just two letters.

  So with a hoist from Meyer Friedman onto the shoulders of Douglas McGregor, I’d like to introduce my own alphabetic way to think about human motivation.

  TYPE I AND TYPE X

  The Motivation 2.0 operating system depended on, and fostered, what I call Type X behavior. 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. The Motivation 3.0 operating system—the upgrade that’s needed to meet the new realities of how we organize, think about, and do what we do—depends on what I call Type I behavior. Type I behavior is fueled more by intrinsic desires than extrinsic ones. It c
oncerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself. At the center of Type X behavior is the second drive. At the center of Type I behavior is the third drive.

  If we want to strengthen our organizations, get beyond our decade of underachievement, and address the inchoate sense that something’s gone wrong in our businesses, our lives, and our world, we need to move from Type X to Type I. (I use these two letters largely to signify “extrinsic” and “intrinsic,” but also to pay homage to Douglas McGregor.)

  To be sure, reducing human behavior to two categories sacrifices a certain amount of nuance. And nobody exhibits purely Type X or Type I behavior every waking minute of every living day without exception. But we do have certain, often very clear, dispositions.

  You probably know what I mean. Think about yourself. Does what energizes you—what gets you up in the morning and propels you through the day—come from the inside or from the outside? What about your spouse, your partner, or your children? How about the men and women around you at work? If you’re like most people I’ve talked to, you instantly have a sense into which category someone belongs.e

  I don’t mean to say that Type X people always neglect the inherent enjoyment of what they do—or that Type I people resist outside goodies of any kind. But for Type X’s, the main motivator is external rewards; any deeper satisfaction is welcome, but secondary. For Type I’s, the main motivator is the freedom, challenge, and purpose of the undertaking itself; any other gains are welcome, but mainly as a bonus.

  A few more distinctions to keep in mind before we go further:Type I behavior is made, not born. These behavioral patterns aren’t fixed traits. They are proclivities that emerge from circumstance, experience, and context. Type I behavior, because it arises in part from universal human needs, does not depend on age, gender, or nationality. The science demonstrates that once people learn the fundamental practices and attitudes—and can exercise them in supportive settings—their motivation, and their ultimate performance, soars. Any Type X can become a Type I.

  Type I’s almost always outperform Type X’s in the long run. Intrinsically motivated people usually achieve more than their reward-seeking counterparts. Alas, that’s not always true in the short term. An intense focus on extrinsic rewards can indeed deliver fast results. The trouble is, this approach is difficult to sustain. And it doesn’t assist in mastery—which is the source of achievement over the long haul. The most successful people, the evidence shows, often aren’t directly pursuing conventional notions of success. They’re working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.

  Type I behavior does not disdain money or recognition. Both Type X’s and Type I’s care about money. If an employee’s compensation doesn’t hit the baseline that I described in Chapter 2—if her organization doesn’t pay her an adequate amount, or if her pay isn’t equitable compared to others doing similar work—that person’s motivation will crater, regardless of whether she leans toward X or toward I. However, once compensation meets that level, money plays a different role for Type I’s than for Type X’s. Type I’s don’t turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. But one reason fair and adequate pay is so essential is that it takes the issue of money off the table so they can focus on the work itself. By contrast, for many Type X’s, money is the table. It’s why they do what they do. Recognition is similar. Type I’s like being recognized for their accomplishments— because recognition is a form of feedback. But for them, unlike for Type X’s, recognition is not a goal in itself.

  Type I behavior is a renewable resource. Think of Type X behavior as coal and Type I behavior as the sun. For most of recent history, coal has been the cheapest, easiest, most efficient resource. But coal has two downsides. First, it produces nasty things like air pollution and greenhouse gases. Second, it’s finite; getting more of it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive each year. Type X behavior is similar. An emphasis on rewards and punishments spews its own externalities (as enumerated in Chapter 2). And “if-then” motivators always grow more expensive. But Type I behavior, which is built around intrinsic motivation, draws on resources that are easily replenished and inflict little damage. It is the motivational equivalent of clean energy: inexpensive, safe to use, and endlessly renewable.

  Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mental well-being. According to a raft of studies from SDT researchers, people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated. By contrast, people whose core aspirations are Type X validations such as money, fame, or beauty tend to have poorer psychological health. There’s even a connection between Type X and Type A. Deci found that those oriented toward control and extrinsic rewards showed greater public self-consciousness, acted more defensively, and were more likely to exhibit the Type A behavior pattern.5

  Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.

  Some might dismiss notions like these as gooey and idealistic, but the science says otherwise. The science confirms that this sort of behavior is essential to being human—and that now, in a rapidly changing economy, it is also critical for professional, personal, and organizational success of any kind.

  So we have a choice. We can cling to a view of human motivation that is grounded more in old habits than in modern science. Or we can listen to the research, drag our business and personal practices into the twenty-first century, and craft a new operating system to help ourselves, our companies, and our world work a little better.

  It won’t be easy. It won’t happen overnight. So let’s get started.

  Part Two

  The Three Elements

  CHAPTER 4

  Autonomy

  I’ve seen the future—and it works. It works in around-the-clock bursts in Sydney, Australia. It works on guerrilla-style side projects in Mountain View, California. And it works whenever it damn well pleases in Charlottesville, Virginia. The reason why it works is because of how it works. On the edges of the economy—slowly, but inexorably—old-fashioned ideas of management are giving way to a newfangled emphasis on self-direction.

  That’s why, a little past noon on a rainy Friday in Charlottesville, only a third of CEO Jeff Gunther’s employees have shown up for work. But Gunther—entrepreneur, manager, capitalist—is neither worried nor annoyed. In fact, he’s as calm and focused as a monk. Maybe that’s because he didn’t roll into the office himself until about an hour ago. Or maybe that’s because he knows his crew isn’t shirking. They’re working—just on their own terms.

  At the beginning of the year, Gunther launched an experiment in autonomy at Meddius, one of a trio of companies he runs. He turned the company, which creates computer software and hardware to help hospitals integrate their information systems, into a ROWE—a r esults-only work environment.

  ROWEs are the brainchild of Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, two former human resources executives at the American retailer Best Buy. ROWE’s principles marry the commonsense pragmatism of Ben Franklin to the cage-rattling radicalism of Saul Alinsky. In a ROWE workplace, people don’t have schedules. They show up when they want. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time—or any time, for that matter. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, and where they do it is up to them.

  That appealed to Gunther, who’s in his early thirties. “Management isn’t about walking around and seeing if people are in their offices,” he told me. It’s about creating conditions for people to do their best work. That’s why he’d always tried to give employees a long leash. But as Meddius expanded, and as G
unther began exploring new office space, he started wondering whether talented, grown-up employees doing sophisticated work needed a leash of any length. So at the company’s holiday dinner in December 2008, he made an announcement: For the first ninety days of the new year, the entire twenty-two-person operation would try an experiment. It would become a ROWE.

  “In the beginning, people didn’t take to it,” Gunther says. The office filled up around nine A.M. and emptied out in the early evening, just as before. A few staffers had come out of extremely controlling environments and weren’t accustomed to this kind of leeway. (At one employee’s previous company, staff had to arrive each day by eight A.M. If someone was late, even by a few minutes, the employee had to write an explanation for everyone else to read.) But after a few weeks, most people found their groove. Productivity rose. Stress declined. And although two employees struggled with the freedom and left, by the end of the test period Gunther decided to go with ROWE permanently.

  “Some people (outside of the company) thought I was crazy,” he says. “They wondered, ‘How can you know what your employees are doing if they’re not here?’ ” But in his view, the team was accomplishing more under this new arrangement. One reason: They were focused on the work itself rather than on whether someone would call them a slacker for leaving at three P.M. to watch a daughter’s soccer game. And since the bulk of his staff consists of software developers, designers, and others doing high-level creative work, that was essential. “For them, it’s all about craftsmanship. And they need a lot of autonomy.”