I posted a video a while back titled “Really? People aren’t motivated by money?” I’ve been using the concepts since with some of our clients who are working on building higher performing cultures. Those of you who watched the video or have been following the research know that Daniel Pink wrote a best selling book, Drive, based on this research.

Over the last few months, my husband has been insisting I read the book, especially as our company is talking about our vision and an appropriate longer-term compensation model to support it. I haven’t been motivated since I usually don’t get a lot more out of the book than a summary article/ video. But, as usually, Eric was right. I finally read it and it was well worth the quick read.

In fact, it actually has me thinking enough about the concepts included that I’m going to do a short series of blogs talking about each of the major concepts. I’ll share with you some of the challenges we’ve had with these concepts at our clients… and even open the kimono a bit on what we are talking about as we are building our company, Thought Ensemble.

Before I jump in, I’ll share one of my very favorite things from the book. In his summary chapter, Pink includes a “Twitter Summary” a “Cocktail Party Summary” and a “Chapter by Chapter Summary”. Every book should be required to do this! Anyway, I love the Twitter summary:

“Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.”