12th Annual Service

Management Forum

Daniel H. Pink
4 March 2010
THE CANDLE PROBLEM
THE CANDLE PROBLEM
THE CANDLE PROBLEM . . . AGAIN
“As long as the task involved only
mechanical skill, bonuses worked as
they would be expected: the higher
the pay, the better the
performance.”

D. ARIELY, U. GNEEZY, G. LOWENSTEIN, & N. MAZAR, Federal Reserve Bank

of Boston Working Paper No. 05-11, July 2005; NY TIMES, 20 Nov. 08
But once the task called for “even
rudimentary cognitive skill,” a larger
reward “led to poorer performance.”

D. ARIELY, U. GNEEZY, G. LOWENSTEIN, & N. MAZAR, Federal Reserve Bank

of Boston Working Paper No. 05-11, July 2005; NY TIMES, 20 Nov. 08
“In eight of the nine tasks we
examined across the three
experiments, higher incentives led
to worse performance.”

D. ARIELY, U. GNEEZY, G. LOWENSTEIN, & N. MAZAR, Federal Reserve Bank

of Boston Working Paper No. 05-11, July 2005
“Our [previous] sales salary
system felt like . . . a gigantic,
complex and medieval
spirograph centered on an
assumption that wasn’t true.”

NEIL DAVIDSON, CO-FOUNDER, RED GATE SOFTWARE

 FACT:
Money is a
motivator.
AUTONOMY
MASTERY

PURPOSE
AUTONOMY
MASTERY

PURPOSE
TIME TECHNIQUE

TEAM TASK
FEDEX DAYS
20 PERCENT TIME
“Just about all the good ideas
here have bubbled up from 20
percent time.”

ALEC PROUDFOOT, Google

Turn your next offsite
into a FedEx Day.
AUTONOMY
MASTERY

PURPOSE
“. . . enjoyment-based intrinsic
motivation, namely how creative a
person feels when working on a
project is the strongest and most
pervasive driver.”

Karim R. Lakhani & Robert G. Wolf, “Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and
Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects,” in Perspectives on Free and Open Software, edited by
J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, and K. Lakhani (MIT Press, 2005)
“The key to motivation . . . doesn’t
depend on elaborate incentive
systems. (In fact, the people in our
study rarely mentioned
incentives.)

Teresa M. Amabile & Steven J. Kramer, “What Really Motivates Workers,” Harvard Business Review
(Jan. 2010)
“. . . making progress in one’s work.”

Teresa M. Amabile & Steven J. Kramer, “What Really Motivates Workers,” Harvard Business Review
(Jan. 2010)
DIY PERFORMANCE
REVIEWS
AUTONOMY
MASTERY

PURPOSE
THE PURPOSE
MOTIVE
“A purpose bigger than your
product (or service -Ed).”

MATS LEDERHAUSEN
 “He preserved the union and
freed the slaves.”

“He lifted us out of a great

depression and helped us win a
world war.”
What’s your
sentence?
Was I better today
than yesterday?
MORE INFO

www.danpink.com

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dp@danpink.com