Daniel Pink

I went into the, looked at the science of motivation, looked at some research on human motivation, and

which turned out to be a treasure trove.

There's a treasure trove of research over the last 50 years in human motivation, and it said some things that really, really surprised me.

Things like carrots and sticks, the classic motivator that we use in business, work, but in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances, and that for a lot of things, they either don't work or backfire colossally, and that there's actually a better approach to motivation

that is not rooted in carrots and sticks, but has to do with autonomy and mastery and purpose.

And that in the 21st century, when more and more of us are doing creative, conceptual, somewhat interesting work, companies that treat people like horses, as if they're motivated only by carrots or the threat of a stick, are actually going to fall behind.

And companies that actually treat people like people offer autonomy, help them move toward mastery, infuse the workplace with a sense of purpose,

Those are the companies that actually are flourishing and will continue to flourish.

I'll give you an example.

I mean, there are companies that are doing this.

Here's a really interesting example from an Australian company called Atlassian.

Atlassian is a software company, and they do something really cool.

Once a quarter, they say to their software developers, for the next 24 hours, you can work on whatever you want.

You can do it with whomever you want.

You can do it the way that you want.

You just have to show the results to the company, the rest of the company, in this fun meeting at the end of those 24 hours.

They call these things FedEx days because you have to deliver something overnight.

Well, it turns out that that one day of undiluted autonomy has produced a whole array of ideas for new products, upgrades to existing products, fixes for some flaws in current products that would never have emerged except for that FedEx day.

Now, this is not a carrot-and-stick motivator.

This is not saying to them, if you are innovative, I will give you $500.