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“The Puzzle of Motivation”  is the title of a TED talk by Dan Pink.  In this talk he asserts that traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think.  Social scientists have conducted research that confirms this, but business is not taking advantage of this research.  There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

Contingent motivators work well in situations where there is a simple set of rules and rewards narrow the focus; but where issues are more complex, they can restrict problem solving. In some situations higher incentives can actually lead to worse performance.

Pink says that intrinsic rewards are far more effective in work that requires problem solving and right brain thinking.  These include:

1.  Autonomy:  Having control over our lives

2.  Mastery:  Gaining skill

3.   Purpose:  Doing work in service of something  bigger than ourselves

He provides examples of companies who use the ROWE approach:  Results Only Work Environment.  Companies who use this approach experience higher productivity and employee satisfaction.  He provides an example of an Australian company that gives engineers 24 hours to work on whatever they want and then present the idea to the company.  They call this “Fed Ex Days”   because they need to deliver their ideas overnight.  Another example he provides is Google who allows engineers to spend 20% of their time on doing what they want.  This  free time has resulted in many new and successful products for Google.