Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us pdfdrive com

TURN YOUR NEXT OFF-SITE INTO A FEDEX DAY

Behold the company off-site, a few spirit-sapping days of forced fun and manufactured morale—featuring awkward pep talks, wretched dancing, and a few “trust falls.” To be fair, some off-sites reengage employees, recharge people’s batteries, and restart conversations on big issues. But if your organization’s off-sites are falling short, why not try replacing the next one with a FedEx Day? Set aside an entire day where employees can work on anything they choose, however they want, with whomever they’d like. Make sure they

have the tools and resources they need. And impose just one rule: People must deliver something—a new idea, a prototype of a product, a better internal process—the following day. Type I organizations know what their Type X counterparts rarely comprehend: Real challenges are far more invigorating than controlled leisure.

The Zen of Compensation: Paying People the Type I Way Everybody wants to be paid well. I sure do. I bet you’re the same. The Type I approach to motivation doesn’t require bargain basement wages or an all- volunteer workforce, but it does demand a new approach to pay.
Think of this new approach as the Zen of compensation: In Motivation 3.0, the best use of money is to take the issue of money off the table.

The more prominent salary, perks, and benefits are in someone’s work life, the more they can inhibit creativity and unravel performance. As Edward Deci explained in Chapter 3, when organizations use rewards like money to motivate staff, “that’s when they’re most demotivating.” The better strategy is to get compensation right—and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

Here are three key techniques.

1.