The mismatch between what science knows and what business does- A talk by Dan Pink

If you get the chance, I recommend watching this video:

Some of the great points made in the video are:

- Rewards and punishments only work for a small number of tasks involving simple sets of rules and a clear goal to reach / involving only mechanical skill - in this case, rewards work because they narrow our focus and concentrate our minds

- Expectedly, the higher the pay, the better the performance here

- However, once the tasks called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger rewards actually led to poorer performance

- In fact, these rewards often destroy creativity, so the secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, it is rather those unseen intrinsic motivators and doing things that matter

- Dan Pink suggested that we use a new building block involving: AUTONOMY, MASTERY and PURPOSE

- With regards to autonomy, self-direction works better- so in a business setting, putting money off the table and giving people autonomy (over their time and such)

- He talks about a model called ROWE (results only work environments) that's created by 2 American consultants and is in place in about a dozen companies around North America. In this model, people don't have schedules. As long as they get their work done, how they do it and when they do it is totally up to them. This actually has led to increased productivity, better worker satisfaction and lower rates of turnover.

- He makes a final proof with this case by using the Wikipedia model vs the Encarta model- where Wikipedia was so much more successful