paying attention

Dan Pink is a mas­ter of cre­ative swip­ing, which is MBA-speak for “he steals other peo­ples’ ideas.” Which isn’t to say he’s not a clever chap. And we cer­tainly guys like him, crafty writ­ers who aren’t put off by research, who weave the lat­est ideas into pithy, punchy, com­pelling nar­ra­tives. Cer­tainly, for every artic­u­late Dan Pink in this world, there are about 100,000 of us Aver­age Joes bang­ing our heads against the wall, utterly dis­mayed that our bosses just don’t get it.

With A Whole New Mind, he made the argu­ment for inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­ity and now again with Drive, he’s com­piled the lat­est insights into moti­va­tion. In both instances, the ideas aren’t new, but you’ll be glad to have it in a pocket-sized, rhetoric-ready, Red Book.

Here’s a video of some of the ideas and then some of the best quotes from the book (fol­lowed by a minor rant from me at the bottom).

Some quotes from Drive

“While com­ply­ing can be an effec­tive strat­egy for phys­i­cal sur­vival, it’s a lousy one for per­sonal ful­fil­ment. Liv­ing a sat­is­fy­ing life requires more than sim­ply meet­ing the demands of those in con­trol. Yet in our offices and our class­rooms we have way too much com­pli­ance and way too lit­tle engage­ment. The for­mer might get you through the day, but only the lat­ter will get you through the night” (p.112).

“Lakhani and Wolf uncov­ered a wide range of motives [with open-source devel­op­ers], but they found ‘that enjoyment-base intrin­sic moti­va­tion, namely how cre­ative a per­son feels when work­ing on the project, is the strongest and most per­va­sive dri­ver.’ A major­ity of pro­gram­mers, the research dis­cov­ered, reported that they fre­quently reached a state of opti­mal chal­lenge called ‘flow’” (p.23).

“If your star­ing point was The­ory X, [McGre­gor] said, your man­age­r­ial tech­niques would inevitably pro­duce lim­ited results or go awry entirely. If you believe in the ‘medi­oc­rity of the masses’, as he put it, then medi­oc­rity became the ceil­ing on what you could achieve” (p. 76).

“The ulti­mate free­dom for cre­ative groups is the free­dom to exper­i­ment with new ideas. Some scep­tics insist that inno­va­tion is expen­sive. In the long run inno­va­tion is cheap. Medi­oc­rity is expen­sive – and auton­omy can be the anti­dote” (p.90)

“Most impor­tantly [when in a flow state] the rela­tion­ship between what a per­son had to do and what he could do was per­fect. The chal­lenge wasn’t too easy. Nor was it too dif­fi­cult. It was a notch or two beyond his cur­rent abil­i­ties, which stretched the body and mind in a way that made the effort itself the most deli­cious reward.… In flow, peo­ple lived deeply in the moment, and felt so utterly in con­trol, that their sense of time, place, and even self melted away. They were autonomous, of course. But more than that, they were engaged” (p.115).

Flow is “oxy­gen for the soul” (p.127).

“Sci­ence shows that the secret to high per­for­mance isn’t our bio­log­i­cal drive or our reward and pun­ish­ment drive, but our third drive – our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our own abil­i­ties, and to live a life with pur­pose.” (p.145).

“Yet in the face of this evi­dence – and as the world econ­omy demands more non-routine, cre­ative, con­cep­tual abil­i­ties – too many schools are mov­ing in the wrong direc­tion. They’re redou­bling their empha­sis on rou­tines, right answers and stan­dard­iza­tion. And their haul­ing out wag­ons full of if-then rewards – pizza for read­ing books, iPods for show­ing up to class, cash for good test scores. We are brib­ing stu­dents into com­pli­ance rather than chal­leng­ing them into engagement.”*

The Oblig­a­tory Rant

*I’ve actu­ally included this last quote, not because it hits the mark, but because  it couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve worked around the world, in amaz­ing, won­der­ful schools, where there are hardly any rules at all because the kids are so dri­ven. And I’ve worked in bottom-of-the-barrel, strug­gling schools –where you’re more wor­ried about stab­bings than cheat­ing. I’ve worked in Cen­tral Amer­ica, the Mid­dle East, North Amer­ica and Europe and yet some­how I’ve never met these narrow-minded teach­ers who’ve got it all wrong.

So, as some­one who cares deeply about our edu­ca­tion sys­tems, I’m tired of these lines.

Schools are not damp­en­ing your daughter’s inner artist.  And they aren’t pun­ish­ing her for ques­tion­ing the rules.  Today’s teach­ers actu­ally care deeply about kids’ devel­op­ment and their own edu­ca­tional prac­tice. They are activists, debat­ing poli­cies, exper­i­ment­ing, work­ing week­ends, squeez­ing 110% out of always-limited resources.

They know the world your kids are grow­ing up into. They’re in the job because they get it and they’re up for the chal­lenge.

So, please, the next time you hear some­one mak­ing this chal­leng­ing straw-man argu­ment, chal­lenge them back. Ask them to give you a real idea about schools, a new idea and not a fake com­plaint. We all care about schools, but there are no easy answers in this field. So let’s make sure that, as much as pos­si­ble, we’re giv­ing the cause of edu­ca­tion our intel­li­gence and our innovation.

As far as the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is con­cerned, I would say to Mr Pink (and to you too Sir Ken Robin­son), “either get on board, or get out of our way.”

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