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Daniel Pink Explains How to Kill Creativity
Solving model problems or creating something the world didn’t know it was missing relies heavily on Harlow’s third drive, a model he calls the Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity–which holds in part: intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity, controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.
This quote comes from Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I just recently started reading this book and I am completely captivated. The book is seemingly a follow up to his last book, A Whole New Mind in which he explains why right brained, creative people will “rule” the future.
I have had issue with work, specifically finding motivation to do work, for a while now. I’m only a few chapters into this book and already Pink has helped to open my eyes to what really motivates good work.
Here is an RSA Animate vid featuring Pink synthesizing his latest book.
Thanks for sharing that. That is exciting stuff to think about. I will put Pink on my 'to read' list, for my next library visit.Why is just watching that motivating?
The question I had while watching the video was how does the church fit into this. He's talking about business models a lot, but how has the church model followed this same *wrong* thinking of how to motivate people.
Johnathan, great question! You're right, Pink does speak primarily to business and educational situations, but I see extremely important parallels and take-aways for ecclisials.Early in the book Pink makes an interesting analogy. He compares human motivation to computer operating systems. Motivation Version 1.0 was simply driven by survival. Humans did what they did to stay alive. Naturally, human kind progressed and Version 2.0 is born. Motivation OS Version 2.0 is driven by reward and fear of punishment (sounds a lot like certain atonement theories to me). This, Pink says, is were business--and I would say the church--is stuck.
As work continues to become less and less logarithmic, version 2.0 is less and less effective. Accordingly, if we are moving toward a time where it's increasingly important for people to be able to think heuristically or creatively, then a new motivation OS is sorely needed.
So in regard to your question, where I see the Church fitting in is this: As we progress toward this new way of thinking (i.e. primarily right brained, intuitive, creative, heuristic modes) this, for me, opens up so much more room for the Holy Spirit to move and work in the world. No longer being bound to if/then, algorithmic ways of solving world problems is a nice thought. Creativity can flourish and grow and perhaps Church can show the world what Koinonia really looks like.
[...] “relational” in nature, which is why I think I appreciate them so much. After reading Daniel Pink’s new book, combined with my current feelings on power and authoritarian control, I now more than ever, along [...]