RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Royal Society of Arts · 20.2M views · 2010 · 10:48

Open on YouTube

Management, leadership & organizationsPsychology & human behaviorexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN uses it in discussions of pay, management, and motivation as the standard short explanation of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

What it is

An RSA Animate whiteboard adaptation of Dan Pink's talk on what motivates people at work. It argues that beyond simple tasks, autonomy, mastery and purpose drive performance more than money.

Recommended by 11 HN commenters across 10 different months, 2010 to 2022.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec MrDunham · 2011-01 · on “Inequality in Equalland”

There's a fantastic video on What Motivates Us. Link is [video] [this video] . One of the things they showed an inverse correlation on amount someone gets paid and what they produce when it's anything above menial labor. Highly worth a watch.

Strong rec btilly · 2014-03 · on “Why good managers are so rare”

The previous manager was very good at "leading through inspiration". He made people feel good about themselves, feel like they were learning, and feel like they were making a difference both for their corner of the world and the whole organization. The new manager was good at keeping track of things and micromanaging. But the most inspiring line she could come up with was, "You still have a job." (I wish I was kidding.) She also had an unfortunate habit of lying badly and often, with a resulting destruction of trust. But that aspect I'm too bitter about at the moment to want to discuss. To see why it matters, go watch [this video] . I believe that its message is not complete (for instance I've no

Recommends dreadlabs · 2010-06 · on “Ask HN: What's your favorite TED Talk?”

I'm note sure if its my favourite but its one i find really interesting. Daniel Pink's talk on Drive, what makes people motivated to perform in the workplace. Really good for employers. There is a TED talk on it and i've seen it but i actually like the RSA animate one better which is essentially the same talk. [this video]

Recommends hasenj · 2010-09 · on “Ask HN: What's the big deal with startups anyways...”

Exactly, the "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" video is a great rebuttal of this idea. [this video]

Recommends sgentle · 2011-06 · on “Ask HN: No intrinisic motivation to build stuff”

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey is a pretty seminal personal management book. It's my top recommendation in terms of "foundational" material. It's not got much in the way of practical tools, but the ideas are applicable everywhere. I would recommend Drive by Dan Pink if you're interested in learning more about creative motivation. It's pretty short, and actually very well summarised here: [this video] Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is very good programmer-specific management material. They cite a lot of work benchmarking the productivity of different workplaces, so it's very "x is good, x is bad". Jim Collins' Good to Great is an examination of businesses tha

Recommends szany · 2011-07 · on “When you're in a team that I lead, there are 3 things that I'd like to ask you”

My instantaneous gut reaction is discomfort. These are all good things, but the tone puts me off. As someone who appreciates autonomy, I would rather be given an objective with advice on how to attain it than rules to follow. Even if the content is the same, it shows more respect. In this case, the objective is simply situation awareness ( [LINK] ) for both parties. The advice is to ask, debrief, and warn. Dan Pink gave a good 10-minute talk about this sort of thing: [this video]

Recommends tayip9 · 2011-07 · on “Ask HN: Is passion a fair thing to ask for from an employee?”

This might fit in with Dan Pink's talk on 'Drive': [this video] Passion can be driven by incentives outside of salary.

Recommends danberger · 2011-12 · on “Bingo Card Creator (etc) Year In Review 2011”

He is obviously not motivated by money and most people aren't when you dig deeper. Many geeks want to achieve mastery, succumb new challenges, etc. I recommend watching this [1] 10m video out about what drives us to understand this a little more. [1] [this video]