Daniel H. Pink Quotes

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln BY DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN

The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

Here's why an allowance is good for kids: Having a little of their own money, and deciding how to save or spend it, offers a measure of autonomy and teaches them to be responsible with cash. Here's why household chores are good for kids: Chores show kids that families are built on mutual obligations and that family members need to help each other. Here's why combining allowances with chores is not good for kids. By linking money to the completion of chores, parents turn an allowance into an "if-then" reward. This sends kids a clear (and clearly wrongheaded) message: In the absence of a payment, no self-respecting child would willingly set the table, empty the garbage, or make her own bed. It converts a moral and familial obligation into just another commercial transaction - and teaches that the only reason to do a less-than-desirable task for your family is in exchange for payment.

And the first step in bulldozing these obstacles is to enumerate them. As Peters puts it, What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes BY ALFIE KOHN

Anytime you're tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you're doing and upserve instead.

Meanwhile, instead of restraining negative behavior, rewards and punishments can often set it loose - and give rise to cheating, addiction, and dangerously myopic thinking.

If people do things for lunk-headed, backward-looking reasons, why wouldn't we also do things for significance-seeking, self-actualizing reasons? If we are predictably irrational - and we clearly are- why couldn't we also be predictably transcendent?

Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.

People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a "fixed mindset" believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a "growth mindset" believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets see the same encounters as opportunities to improve.

The capacity for logical thought is one of the things that makes us human. But in a world of ubiquitous information and advanced analytical tools, logic alone won't do. What will distinguish those who thrive will be their ability to understand what makes their fellow woman or man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others.

Big Picture Learning. Since 1996, with the opening of its flagship public high school, the Met, in Providence, Rhode Island, Big Picture Learning has been creating places that cultivate engagement rather

Chapter 6 will explore purpose, our yearning to contribute and to be part of something larger than ourselves.

Think strengths, not weaknesses.
The research of Martin Seilgman and Marcus Buckingham has found that the key to success is to steer around your weaknesses and focus on your strengths. Successful people don't try to hard to improve what they're bad at. They capitalize on what they're good at.
... Think about it. What are your strengths? What do you do consistently well? What gives you energy rather than drains it? What sorts of activities create "flow" in you? (FLOW is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. )
You won't accomplish anything until you stop worrying about your weaknesses and start using your strengths!

self-determination theory." Many theories of behavior pivot around a particular human tendency: We're keen responders to positive and negative reinforcements, or zippy calculators of our self-interest, or lumpy duffel bags of psychosexual conflicts.

Grades become a reward for compliance - but don't have much to do with learning. Meanwhile, students whose grades don't measure up often see themselves as failures and give up trying to learn.

People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person's motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person's intrinsic motivation toward the activity.

Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate and to connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.

When the reward is the activity itself
deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best
there are no shortcuts.

Whenever I meet someone new, I always ask the same question ... 'So, what do you do?

I don't think it's a Western thing to really talk about intrinsic motivation and the drive for autonomy, mastery and purpose. You have to not be struggling for survival. For people who don't know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.

The capacity to see the big picture is perhaps the most important as an antidote to the variety of psychic woes brought forth by the remarkable prosperity and plentitude of our times. Many of us are crunched for time, deluged by information, and paralyzed by the weight of too many choices. The best prescription for these modern maladies may be to approach one's own life in a contextual, big picture fashion - to distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys.

A "grouplet" - a small, self-organized team that has almost no budget and even less authority, but that tries to change something within the company.

HAVE A FEDEX DAY

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles BY STEVEN PRESSFIELD Pressfield's

Mastery of design, empathy, play, and other seemingly "soft" aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience BY MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

So get rid of the unnecessary obligations, time-wasting distractions, and useless burdens that stand in your way.

The Tinkering School. More of a lab than a school, this summer program, created by computer scientist Gever Tulley, lets children from seven to seventeen play around with interesting stuff and build cool things.

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility BY JAMES P. CARSE

Clarity depends on contrast. In

A lot of times when you have very short-term goals with a high payoff, nasty things can happen. In particular, a lot of people will take the low road there. They'll become myopic. They'll crowd out the longer-term interests of the organization or even of themselves.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what
people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities,
the result is boredom. But when the
match is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.

One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non-sales selling isn't natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.

motivators" - things like enjoyment of the work itself, genuine achievement, and personal growth.

Sales and theater have much in common. Both take guts. Salespeople pick up the phone and call strangers; actors walk onto the stage in front of them. Both invite rejection - for salespeople, slammed doors, ignored calls, and a pile of nos; for actors, a failed audition, an unresponsive audience, a scathing review. And both have evolved along comparable trajectories.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics.

The Queen died. The King died."
"The Queen died. And the King died of a broken heart."
The first line was fact. The second line was a story. It placed the facts in context, added emotion and made us connect to it by making it memorable.

It's nothing short of a whole new brain ... animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life.

I say, 'Get me some poets as managers.' Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow's new business leaders.
Sidney Harman, CEO Multimillionaire of a stereo components company

A world of flat organizations and tumultuous business conditions – and that's our world – punishes fixed skills and prizes elastic ones.

In the past thirty years we have learned more about the workings of the human brain than in all of previous history.

In flow, the relationship between what a person had to do and what he could do was perfect. The challenge wasn't too easy.
Nor was it too difficult. It was a notch or two beyond his current abilities, which stretched the body and mind in a way that made the effort itself
the most delicious reward. That balance produced a degree of focus and satisfaction that easily surpassed other, more quotidian,
experiences. In flow, people lived so deeply in the moment, and felt so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place, and even self melted
away. They were autonomous, of course. But more than that, they were engaged.

Only contingent rewards - if you do this, then you'll get that - had the negative effect. Why? "If-then" rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy.

The balance of power has shifted - and how we've moved from a world of caveat emptor, buyer beware, to one of caveat venditor, seller beware - where honesty, fairness, and transparency are often the only viable path.

We live in a world of breathtaking material plenty. That has freed hundreds of millions of people from day-to-day struggles and liberated us to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment.

Design - that is, utility enhanced by significance - has become an essential aptitude for personal fulfillment and professional success

The science shows that the secret to high performance isn't our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive - our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

ultimately, open source depends on intrinsic motivation with the same ferocity that older business models rely on extrinsic motivation,

Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw.

Rewards can deliver a short-term boost - just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off - and, worse, can reduce a person's longer-term motivation to continue the project.

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation BY EDWARD L. DECI WITH RICHARD FLASTE

Empathy is an essential part of living a life of meaning.

This is what it means to serve: improving another's life and, in turn, improving the world.

To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources - not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.

Montessori Schools. Dr. Maria Montessori developed the Montessori method of teaching in the early 1900s after observing children's natural curiosity and innate desire to learn.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive - and autonomy can be the antidote. TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO

Extraverts, in other words, often stumble over themselves. They can talk too much and listen too little, which dulls their understanding of others' perspectives. They can fail to strike the proper balance between asserting and holding back, which can be read as pushy and drive people away.*

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art. - TWYLA THARP

Asking "Why?" can lead to understanding. Asking "Why not?" can lead to breakthroughs.

Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and goodness of others.

Experimentalists never know when their work is finished.

A genuine smile involves two facial muscles: (1) the zygomatic major muscle, which stretches from the cheekbone and lifts the corners of the mouth; and (2) the outer part of the obicularis oculi muscle, which orbits the eye, and is involved in "pulling down the eyebrows and the skin below the eyebrows, pulling up the skin below the eye, and raising the cheeks."7 Artificial smiles involve only the zygomatic major.

find what drives us

Today, the defining skills of the previous era - the "left brain" capabilities that powered the Information Age - are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous - the "right-brain" qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning - increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.

Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table - so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash.

What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.

Today it's economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.

A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us. In some sense, we are born to sell.

Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don't have schedules. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.

Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don't you think you should be pitching more with questions?

Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world.

We have this myth that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance - that is, how many times the cash register actually rings - the correlation's almost zero.

In the past, work was defined primarily by putting in time, and secondarily on getting results. "We need to flip that model," Ressler told me. "No matter what kind of business you're in, it's time to throw away the tardy slips, time clocks and outdated, industrial-age thinking.

Pitches that rhyme are more sublime.

Persistence trumps talent.
What's the most powerful force in the universe? Compound interest. It builds on itself. Over time, a small amount of money becomes a large amount of money. Persistence is similar. A little bit improves performance, which encourages greater persistence which improves persistence even more. And on and on it goes.
Lack of persistence works the same way
only in the opposite direction.
Of course talent is important, but the world is lit erred with talented people who didn't persist, who didn't put in the hours, who gave up too early, who thought they could ride on talent alone. Meanwhile, people who might have less talent pass them by.
That's why intrinsic motivation is so important. Doing things not the get an external reward like money or a promotion, but because you simple like doing it. The more intrinsic motivation you have , the more likely you are to persist. The more you persist, the more likely you are to succeed.

The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness. It

Identifying problems as a way to move others takes two

I tend to pull nuggets out of many books - rather than having a handful of books that serve as guiding lights.

Leave an imprint.
You're young now. But when you get older and look back at your life, you'll ask yourself a whole bunch of questions. Did I make a difference? Did I contribute something? Did my being here matter? Dud I do something that left an imprint?
I'm not asking you to end hunger or repair the ozone. But I am asking you to think about your purpose
to recognize that your life isn't infinite, and that you should use your limited time here to do something that matters.

For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.

We have in our head something called story grammar. We see the world as a series of episodes rather than logical propositions ... In our serious society, storytelling is seen as being soft. But people process the world through story.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

Carry a notebook and write down examples of good and poor design. After a week, you'll begin to realize that nearly everything is the product of a design decision.

Rewards do not undermine people's intrinsic motivation for dull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic motivation to be undermined.

In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.

ingredients of genuine motivation - autonomy, mastery, and purpose - they

(Of course, other animals also respond to rewards and punishments, but only humans have proved able to channel this drive to develop everything from contract law to convenience stores.)

The freedom they have to do great work is more valuable, and harder to match, than a pay raise - and employees' spouses, partners, and families are among ROWE's staunchest advocates.

Financial firms are sending their back-office jobs overseas. But what do fine artists do? They create something new, unexpected, and delightful that changes the world. MFA abilities are harder to outsource and more important in an abundant world.

Most of what we know about sales comes from a world of information asymmetry, where for a very long time sellers had more information than buyers. That meant sellers could hoodwink buyers, especially if buyers did not have a lot of choices or a way to talk back.

When the cold front of demographics meets the warm front of unrealized dreams, the result will be a thunderstorm of purpose the likes of which the world has never seen.

Queston 1. "On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning 'not the least bit ready' and 10 meaning "totally ready", how ready are you to study?
- After she offers her answer, move to: -
Question 2. "Why didn't you pick a lower number?

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic 'right-brain' thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Finally, at every opportunity you have to move someone - from traditional sales, like convincing a prospect to buy a new computer system, to non-sales selling, like persuading your daughter to do her homework - be sure you can answer the two questions at the core of genuine service. If the person you're selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you're doing something wrong.

Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little "decision latitude." Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it's another way of describing autonomy - and lawyers are glum and cranky because they don't have much of it.

Lead with questions, not answers." "Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion." "Conduct autopsies, without blame." "Build 'red flag' mechanisms." In other words, make it easy for employees and customers to speak up when they identify a problem.