Sunday, July 25, 2010

What drive you work? - The review of book Drive

Today I finish reading the book Drive-The surprising Truth About What Motivates Us". I knew this book from this 10 minutes cartoon on twitter, and the author's video about drive.The topic sound interesting to me, so I started to read the book. To my surprise, the book is quite easy to read, I was so absorbed in it,  most of the book was finished on the flight trip to London.This is very unusual to me, since I seldom finishing a English book in such a short time, except Agatha Christie's  novel.
The core concept of the book: The traditional external carrot & stick motivator does not work on 21 century; we need to upgrade to intrinsic motivator: autonomy, mastery, & purpose.
This concept is not new to me, it reminds me some other books which share the similar theory behind:
  • Maslow's self realization theory;
  • Lean Technology and Deming's theory;
  • Seven Habits
  • Maverick
  • The passionate programmer
  • The fifth discipline

This book drives me into deep thinking about the 3 factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

What I learned from the book
 - Autonomy, mastery and purpose are correlated, and each of them supports each other.
      Good example: Since I have the mastery in my mind, I have the passion to do things better; if I get the autonomy, I get trust, I am allowed to do my job on my way, then I will focus entirely on the job, and try to doing my job better, since I know the purpose of my job, I know the whole picture, and I enjoy the whole process.
      Bad example: In the command & control hierarchy, I am just a interchangable resource, I can not control what I am going to do; I have to follow the order from my boss; my job is make my boss happy, I don't care job itself. I don't know the my job related to any purpose, I just know get my job done, make my boss happy and get my money. It is impossible to get highly motivated.
  - The road to "go independent" is the right way to me, I get this idea from the book of "the Passionate programmer".This is the only thing that can guarantee you to get autonomy. You can not control your company, you can not decide who is your boss, but at least you can control your self if you are independent software developer.
 -  Reinforce my goal to mastery.
  I feel lucky that I am still a programmer instead of manager, this give me a chance to become a master in future.Keep improve yourself, love your job, treat your career as an infinite game, keep challenge your self.
     
Next step thinking:
- Compare drive with Lean technology
- Investigate the "flow" concept
- If you are a Type I person, how can you do in a Type X organization, how to deal with your Type X boss?
- What kind of Type I organization should be? How to migrate from Type X to Type I organization?
- Why we should focus Type I behavior in software industry?
- Why manager need to give up control?
- use the theory in "drive" to explain the "three stone cutter stories"
- Read the book of "the fifh discipline".

Resources:
1. 10 minutes video link
2. author Daneil Pink's presentation
3. Dan pink's website
4. The reading list of drive

No comments:

Post a Comment