What motivates startup employees? Lessons from Daniel Pink’s “Drive”
Summary: Dan Pink’s “Drive” explores the roots of motivation, and can help in recruiting, retaining, and developing startup teams. E-mail. Tweet.
After my last post on evaluating startup personnel, I was referred to Daniel Pink’s book, Drive. Here, Pink explores the major factors that underlie our motivation, and applies them to the workplace context.
He asserts (with supporting research) that for basic, rudimentary tasks money can work as a motivator; however, when tasks get more complicated, requiring conceptual and creative thinking monetary incentives no longer work. That said, you need to pay people well enough to take the issue of money off the table…or said another way, a fair salary is “table stakes” for a highly functioning team.
Applying this to the startup context, makes enormous sense, as people who join those teams are motivated by something bigger, and their tasks are never “routine”. In Drive, Pink’s findings and suggestions are directly applicable to tangible mechanisms that can be used in a startup, or any other innovation management context.
