Daniel Pink's Drive came up recently through a friend. He had watched Pink's TED talk who described how incentives work as motivation on very simple tasks. When creativity and innovation and working around ambiguity is required, incentives get in the way. Pink's book talks about motivation around Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose.
This is similar to Alfred Kohn's wisdom regarding motivation. In his seminal book Punished By Rewards: The Problem with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes, Kohn suggests motivating by offering choice, autonomy in job content and opportunities to collaborate, which expands a person's horizon to a greater purpose. Pink does give credit to Kohn's work in helping formulate his triad of motivation.
Providing choice, content and collaboration creates an environment in which individuals can soar. Relationships will be strong. The organization will be healthy. (Hmm, Patrick Lencioni would applaud through his The Advantage.)
Pink also mentioned having a Results-Oriented Work Environment (ROWE). I've been in a company that operated kind of this way. Best Buy may have done this too. It can be an operating mode for many companies, even manufacturers if they think about it. When done well, it can be the policy that helps put choice, content and collaboration into the workplace.
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