Dan Pink Motivation TED Talk

The motivation of human instinct to solve tasks is getting a new look, and maybe starting to take a front seat as time rolls along. The old motivations of incentives and threats may decrease efficiency compared to the motivation of human instinct, and people around the world are starting to take notice. One of the people taking notice is Dan Pink, whose TED talk centered around this concept of the natural motivation of humans to solve tasks on their own.

Experiments and other examples of Dan Pink really point toward the fact that the motivation that is used in business around the world could be improved to increase production. For example, professor Sam Glucksberg of Princeton set a puzzle the candle problem, as shown below, in front of a group of participants in a study of natural human motivation and incentives. One half of the group was given an incentive of $5-20 for performing at a high pace in the task, and the other half was given no incentive. It took the group with the reward on the line an average of three and a half minutes longer to complete the candle problem than the group that had no incentive, which goes against what the motivational strategy in our current society is. This study simply proves the fact that natural human motivation can carry one farther than the motivation which drives our society right now.

Dan Pink while giving his presentation rattled off facts quickly and didn't stray much from the topic. He didn't seem to use very many tactics other than to stay on topic and throw in the occasional joke. I think he was lucky he had such an interesting topic that he could do this though, because other TED speakers had to throw a few creative techniques into their speech just to keep the audience engaged.

What I think might be a must in all truly great presentations is at least a little bit of humor. It seems as though all of the TED talks I have heard so far have tried to throw in some humor or other form of entertainment to keep their speech going. While it is consistently a must, if the form of entertainment is creative it has a great effect on the direction of the presentation because the audience likes to hear something funny or see something cool, because it gives them more energy and willingness to take in what they hear from the speaker.

What I don't get about this new form of motivation from Dan Pink is how this form of motivation will replace the motivation that comes from incentives and threats. While this natural human motivation may be effective when it comes to small tasks, people will not be too happy about giving up their salaries to be a little bit more effective. In the workforce, people in general work because of their pay. This salary is an incentive that motivates most people because without salary there would be nothing for people to survive off of, at least without robbery. For Dan Pink's new form of motivation to truly come to fruition throughout corporate America, I believe we would have to shift to a moneyless society. At the same time, this would probably mean embracing communism, and communism is a very difficult type of society to embrace. This means that a widespread embrace of natural motivation is almost impossible in my mind. I do think though that it can be used very effectively in smaller, more controlled environments where salary is not an issue.