[Type the company name] | The puzzle of motivation- Dan Pink | Podcast review | | | |

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A Summary of the principles, behaviors, or attributes reflected in the podcast
The key message from the Dan Pink’s puzzle of motivation is that, in the 21st century, motivation to employees does not work through the extrinsic benefits like financial incentives but through the intrinsic benefits as they are of self interest. He uses an experiment of karl Dunker’s on behavioral science “ The candle problem” to show case his opinion that when financial incentives are given to employees it limits the creativity and they perform worse. The results of the research conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States and the Economists from LSE also concluded the same. Pink says that there is a mismatch in what science knows and what business does, and many companies are making their policies about the talent and people based on the outdated assumptions. In 21st century motivation is built around the intrinsic benefits and the business operates on “Autonomy” people urge to drive their own lives, “Mastery” people desire to get better at something that is important to them and “Purpose” that is interest in doing something which matters. Pink states that if companies are looking for the engagement, self-direction woks well. Another interesting point is ROWE that is Results Only Work Environment and this concept is developed by 2 American consultants and now adopted by several companies. ROWE model doesn’t have any schedules for work; workers are expected to get their work done. The companies which have adopted this model have increase in their productivity, worker engagement, work satisfaction and very few people switched their jobs.
How these principles, behaviors, or attributes apply in a business environment
The principles and the point’s discussed in the presentation by Dan Pink play a vital role in business and organizational environment. Pink give 3 examples in his presentation on success of adopting intrinsic benefits over financial benefits. He speaks about the Australian software company called Atlassian’s ,which adopted a concept of giving an opportunity to their employees to work on their cool ideas which are not related to work for 24 hours and present them. This resulted in development of many cool products in 24 hours and motivated employees. Another example he used is “Google” where employees are encouraged to use Google’s recourses to work on their own ideas for 20 percent of their work time. Gmail, Orkut and Google news are the result of it. The best example he used to differentiate the results based on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is success of Wikipedia over Microsoft’s encyclopaedia called Encarta. Microsoft paid professionals to write and edit the articles where as Wikipedia was open for people to write their articles and information and they were not paid any amount, and people wrote on Wikipedia with self-interest. The above cases on application of the principles, shared by Dan prove that the intrinsic factors motivate people to work efficiently than the extrinsic in business environment.
How I would apply these management principles as a manager
The management principles shared by Dan Pink are crucial in today’s work environment, as people are motivated with intrinsic benefits. I as a manager have already adopted the concept of ROWE in my previous organization, where I communicate my expectations to the team, give them certain deadline and give them the freedom to work from wherever they want. I have also given them additional benefit by providing a Laptop and internet connection and other facilities from company side to ease their work. As a result of this our company had no employee who has left the organization since its origin that is September, 2011. However, in future, based on the company I work for, I would adopt the best principle of work according to the complexity of the business and the data, as there few companies where the security of data is really crucial. I would adopt principle of Mastery and Purpose in the situation where I cannot consider ROWE. I would also definitely add the financial benefit to the team as I feel financial motivation also adds to intrinsic motivation, but not purely for the cognitive skills. I would encourage team to come up with their ideas, support them in exploring their personal interest by providing an environment where they have access to the resources needed.