Welcome to Sentivia

Alright, let's talk. It's time I came clean about a few things.

First off, who am I? Well, I'm someone who, in a moment of what I can only describe as youthful folly, decided to go to law school back in the late 80s. Yeah, that's right, law school. I know, it's not exactly the most exciting start to a story, is it? The truth is, I didn’t excel. In fact, I managed to graduate in that bottom ten percent, making the top 90% possible, if you get my drift! I've never actually practiced law, and honestly, I think that's for the best.

But, here I am today, against my better judgment, and even against my wife’s advice, I’m dusting off those rusty legal skills. I'm not here to tell you a story. I’m here to make a case. A hard-headed, evidence-based, yes, even *lawyerly* case, for why we need to rethink how we run our businesses.

I'm starting with a problem, something called the "Candle Problem". See, the key to understanding this is to see that we often get stuck on *functional fixedness*. We see a box only as a container, when it's so much more! It’s a classic.

I've spent the past few years digging into the science of motivation. And honestly, the more I learn, the more frustrated I get, because there is a HUGE mismatch between what science knows, and what the business world does. We are operating our businesses as if we are still living in the 20th century. We're using carrots and sticks to motivate people, just like the old days, for tasks that just don’t benefit from that approach.

The thing is, the world has changed. Routine, rule-based work is being outsourced or automated. We need creative, conceptual thinkers now, to solve the complex problems we face today. Those are tasks that cannot be motivated by that old school way of thinking.

Look at the experiment that Glucksberg did, the one where the participants were *incentivized* with a monetary reward to solve the candle problem. They actually took *longer* to solve it! That makes no sense! I mean, we are Americans, we believe in free markets! It should be common sense to think if you want better performance, you reward them right? But the science is showing us that incentives actually dull the thinking and blocks the creativity needed to solve the more complex problems! And this has been replicated over and over again for forty years!

And it's not just some wacky social theory or my personal feeling. I'm a lawyer; I don't believe in feelings. It's a true fact, the data and the science proves it! The same thing happened with MIT students in a series of games that tested creativity and concentration! Once they introduced incentives, the performance worsened, no matter how large the reward. They then tested this in India and found the same thing! And it’s not just some academic idea. The London School of Economics reviewed 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans and found that financial incentives can *negatively* impact overall performance. And these are the guys who train some of the great economic thinkers!

So, what do we do? We can’t keep going down the path we are on. We need to get past this outdate way of thinking about carrots and sticks. We need to focus on intrinsic motivation, which is the desire to do something because it matters, it's interesting, or its part of something bigger than yourself. I believe we can build businesses around three core elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Today, I want to focus on autonomy. This 20th-century idea of management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-direction is key. Look at Atlassian, they give their engineers 24 hours to work on anything they want! That one day of radical autonomy has resulted in incredible innovations. Google has their famous 20% time, where people can work on anything they want! Look at the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) model where people just need to get their work done and show up when they want! This is not some Utopian fantasy. These are models that have led to better productivity, higher engagement, and better overall company satisfaction.

And I think the real proof of all of this is the battle between Microsoft’s Encarta and Wikipedia. Look at that for a moment. Encarta had all of the right resources, the funding and employees, and it ultimately lost out to Wikipedia’s completely volunteer based model! Intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation. It's a knockout!

So, where are we? The science is clear. These 20th-century rewards have a limited application. Those if-then rewards destroy creativity. And high performance is fueled by the intrinsic drive, the drive to do things for their own sake. And the kicker? We know this intuitively! We know this in our hearts! If we can bridge this gap between what the science says and what businesses do, if we update how we think about motivation, then we can strengthen our businesses and solve the world’s most difficult problems!

I rest my case.