A book we have been reading a lot recently is the author Dan Pink’s new book Drive. Indeed ‘Tipping Point’ author Malcolm Gladwell has himself recently endorsed the book.
In it Pink examines what motivates us. Whilst for the intended audience of the book he focused on what intrinsically motivates us to be innovative, what fascinated us at TCC was the entire motivational structure that he in effect described in Maslowian terms:
- Motivation 1.0 – Security and Survival motivations
- Motivation 2.0 – Extrinsic motivations
- Motivation 3.0 – Intrinsic motivations
For a good summary of Pink’s arguments why not go to his recent lecture at the RSA, where I asked him a question about its impact on the public sector and where afterwards we both agreed on the useful information at the World Values Survey which he mentioned in his other book A Whole New Mind.
He has also given a talk as part of the TED series of lectures.
And even spoke to Google at the Googleplex!
We think understanding what motivates us and what our varying needs might be at different parts of our life is really important to public policy. Not everyone is the same at all times through their life and often there is a challenge of demotivation within communities which can impact on resilience and weaken local social capital. That is why TCC is collaborating with Cultural Dynamics to develop Values Modes segmentation systems to understand the levels of demotivation within communities so that they and the public bodies that serve them, can work together to tackle it more effectively.
Charlie Mansell is Research and Development Officer of the Campaign Company.