Blog 3: Dan Pink "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"

In Dan Pink’s “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” Pink indicates the need for change not only within businesses but the world because of society’s changing approach to becoming motivated. Through many different studies and data, Pink is able to illustrate why and how people are becoming more intrinsically and less extrinsically motivated and what effect this is having on the world. Without change, businesses and the economy will not recognize the success it used to and wishes to see. Through Pink’s talk, he describes the importance of change in the world because of the growth of more intrinsically motivated workers.

To create a casual yet informative talk, Dan Pink effectively uses different voice inflections and the animated video efficiently uses animated drawings. Throughout his talk, Pink’s tone of voice was always changing. This constant changing made his talk more lively and enabled the audience to recognize what Pink wanted to emphasize more and what was used just as extra information to reinforce the facts and point he was trying to get across. The animated video allows for an easier and more visual way to follow what Pink is saying, helped to add some humor, and made it easier for younger viewers to understand what was being discussed. RSA’s animations also kept the viewer more entertained and attentive to the talk. The animated words that were written in the video corresponded with Pink’s major points, further emphasizing the most important details in his speech. Effective voice inflections and video animations enabled Pink to have a successful, explanatory talk.

Dan Pink in his talk “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” accurately describes the demand to change society’s ‘inner workings’ because of the growth of intrinsically motivated people. Gone are the days when bosses could increase pay or give large bonuses and expect more effective work from employees. While some people are still extrinsically motivated, more people are starting to prefer to be motivated by themselves and their goals. Although most scoffed at the beginning of its creation, Wikipedia has become “...the 16th most visited site on the web” (Zhang and Zhu). To this day, Wikipedia has become one of the most well known and most visited websites on the world wide web. The trick about Wikipedia is that it thrives completely off intrinsically motivated people. From the beginning, no one was paid to add information to the website and yet it continued to grow (article we read). “The number of articles doubles every ten weeks from the beginning to March 2002 and ever 30 weeks March 2002 to October 2002. The rate stabilizes at at about doubling every 40 weeks afterwards...During the first year, the number of users doubles every 10 weeks, and after that, the number doubles every 22 weeks” (Zhang and Zhu). Other websites and businesses have had to change how they operate because of Wikipedia successful product from self motivated people, but the rest of the world must follow. Websites and business appear to be far ahead as far as adapting to the changing ways of motivation in their field. Since the Industrial Age businesses have become  more technology based thus making it easier for resulting in work that is more meaningful to the younger generation; meaningful work is one way to create a positive and successful intrinsic environment (Thomas). However, schools need to find a way to catch up and discover new ways to motivate students. Often today students are very unmotivated and procrastinate, or do not even complete homework. Getting good grades appears to not be a strong extrinsic motivation factor for most high school students. So why not create an environment where students are transformed into intrinsically motivated students. In order to change and generate avid learners schools need to make classes more applicable to daily life. Too often in school, the subject being taught has no use to students in their daily life (Kirk); thus leading to lack of motivation to complete assignments. Teachers also need to create a classroom environment in which everyone assists and motivates one another. “Perceived competence represents the extent to which a person believes that she has performed or is able to perform well at an activity...The higher the perceived competence, the higher is the motivation to exert effort for the group goals” (Zhang and Zhu). The converse of perceived competence is also true; if a person feels like their effort is going to waste, their motivation will decline. In order restore motivation and high educational status to America’s fine, young students, schools need to adapt to a more intrinsic friendly style of teaching and motivation. Refusal to adapt and change with the slowly evolving, intrinsically motivated world, will result in underachievement of businesses, economy, and society.

Works Cited

Kirk, Karin. "Motivating Students." Motivating Students. On the Cutting Edge, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. <http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/motivation.html>.

Thomas, Kenneth. "THE FOUR INTRINSIC REWARDS THAT DRIVE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT - Ivey Business Journal." Ivey Business Journal. N.p., Nov.-Dec. 2009. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. <http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/the-workplace/the-four-intrinsic-rewards-that-drive-employee-engagement#.U1RkN-ZdXno>.

Zhang, Xiaoquan (Michael), and Feng Zhu. "Intrinsic Motivation of Open Case Contributors: The Case of Wikipedia." N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. <http://butlercommonplace.org/thoughts/images/d/d8/ZhangZhu2006.pdf>.