Societies, like computers, have operating systems - a set of mostly invisible instructions and protocols on which everything runs. The first human operating system - call it Motivation 1.0 - was all about survival. Its successor, Motivation 2.0, was built around external rewards and publishment. That worked fine for routine twentieth-century tasks. But in the twenty-first century, Motivation 2.0 is proving incompatible with how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do, and how we do what we do. We need an update. 

When carrots and sticks encounter our third drive, strange things begin to happen. Traditional “if-then” rewards can give us less of what we want: They can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, and crowd out good behavior. They can also give us more of what we don’t want: They can encourage unethical behavior, create addictions, and foster short-term thinking. These are the bugs in our current operating system. 

Carrots and sticks aren’t all bad. They can be effective for rule-based routine tasks - because there’s little intrinsic motivation to undermine and not much creativity to crush. And they can be more effective still if those giving such rewards offer a rationale for why the task is necessary, acknowledge that it’s boring, and allow people autonomy over how they complete it. For “But, now that” rewards - noncontingent rewards given after as task is complete - can sometimes be okay for more creative, right-brain work, especially if they provide useful information about performance. 

Motivation 2.0 depended on and fostered Type X behavior - behavior fueled more by extrinsic desires than intrinsic one and concerned less with the inherent satisfaction of an activity and more with the external rewards to which an activity leads. Motivation 3.0, the upgrade that’s necessary for the smooth functioning of twenty-first-century business, depends on and foster Type I behavior. Type I behavior concerns itself with the external rewards an activity brings and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself. For professional success and personal fulfillment, we need to move ourselves and our colleagues from Type X to Type I. The good news is that Type I’s are made, not born-and Type I behavior leads to stronger performance, greater health, and higher overall well-being. 

Our “default setting” is to be autonomous and self-directed. Unfortunately, circumstances - including outdated notions of “management”- often conspire to change that default setting and turn us from Type I to Type X. To encourage Type I behavior, and the high performance it enables, the first requirement is autonomy. People need autonomy over task (what they do), time (when they do it), team (who they do it with), and technique (how they do it). Organizations that have found inventive, sometimes radical, ways to boost autonomy are outperforming their competitors. 

While Motivation 2.0 required compliance, Motivation 3.0 demands engagement. Only engagement can produce mastery - becoming better at something that matters. And the pursuit of mastery, and important but often dormant part of our third drive, has become essential to making one’s way in the economy. Indeed, making progress in one’s work turns out to be the single most motivating aspect of many jobs. Mastery begins with “flow”- optimal experiences when the challenges we face are exquisitely matched to our abilities. Smart workplaces therefore supplement day-to-day activities with “Gold-ilocks tasks”- not too hard and not too easy. But mastery also abides by three peculiar rules. Mastery is a mindset: It requires the capacity to see your abilities not as finite, but as infinitely improvable. Mastery is a pain: It demands effort, grit, and deliberate practice. And mastery is an asymptote: It’s impossible to fully realize, which makes it simultaneously frustrating and alluring.

Humans, by their nature, seek purpose - to make a contribution and to be part of a cause greater and more enduring than themselves. But traditional businesses have long considered purpose ornamental - a perfectly nice accessory, so long as it didn”t get in the way of the important things. But that’s changing - thanks in part to the rising tide of aging baby boomers reckoning with their own mortality. In Motivation 3.0, purpose maximization is taking its place along-side profit maximization as a aspiration and a guiding principle. Within organization, this new “purpose motive” is expressing itself in three ways: in goals that use profit to reach purpose; in words that emphasize more then self-interest; and in policies that allow people to pursue purpose on their own terms. This move to accompany profit maximization with purpose maximization has the potential to rejuvenate our businesses and remake our world. 

From:  by Daniel H.Pink