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在開始之前我必須告解,大概20年前,我做了一件會後悔的事,那是我一點也不為之驕傲的事,我希望不會有人知道,但在這裡我覺得必須說出來。
1980年代末,年少輕狂時,我進了法學院。
在美國,法律是個專業學位,拿到大學學位再去讀法學院,當我進法學院時,我念得並不是很好,委婉地說,我做得並不是很好,事實上,畢業的時候,我的成績排名是年級前90%。
謝謝。
我在現實生活中從來沒從事過與法律相關的工作,大概也是我從未被允許過那樣做。
但今天,不顧我自己理性的判斷,不顧我太太的忠告,我想重拾一些法律技能,還剩下來的那些法律技能,我不想講故事,而是想陳述一個案件,實事求是、基於證據,可以說是像律師案子類的案件,以此反思我們如何營商。
各位陪審團大人們請看,這個被稱為「蠟燭問題」的案例,有些人可能之前看過,這是在1945年由心理學家Karl Duncker首先設計的實驗,這在很多行為學實驗中都有使用,大家來看看它要如何進行,假設我是實驗者,我把你帶到一個房間,給你一根蠟燭、一些圖釘和一些火柴,然後對你說:「你的任務是讓蠟燭附到牆上,且蠟不能滴到桌上」,你會怎麼做?
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
I need to make a confession at the outset here. A little over 20 years ago I did something that I regret, something that I'm not particularly proud of, something that, in many ways, I wish no one would ever know, but here I feel kind of obliged to reveal. (Laughter) In the late 1980s, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I went to law school. (Laughter)
Now, in America law is a professional degree. You get your university degree. Then you go on to law school. And when I got to law school, I didn't do very well. To put it mildly, I didn't do very well. I, in fact, graduated in the part of my law school class that made the top 90 percent possible. (Laughter) Thank you. I never practiced law a day in my life. I pretty much wasn't allowed to. (Laughter)
But today, against my better judgement, against the advice of my own wife, I want to try to dust off some of those legal skills, what's left of those legal skills. I don't want to tell you a story. I want to make a case. I want to make a hard-headed, evidence-based, dare I say lawyerly case, for rethinking how we run our businesses.
So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, take a look at this. This is called the candle problem. Some of you might have seen this before. It's created in 1945 by a psychologist named Karl Duncker. Karl Duncker created this experiment that is used in a whole variety of experiments in behavioral science. And here's how it works. Suppose I'm the experimenter. I bring you into a room. I give you a candle, some thumbtacks and some matches. And I say to you, "Your job is to attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table." Now what would you do?
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很多人開始嘗試用圖釘把蠟燭釘到牆上,不成功,我看到有一些人在那邊做動作,有些人想到了好辦法,點燃火柴來融化蠟燭的一邊,企圖把蠟燭粘到牆上,這樣的好方法也不成功,最後,在5分鐘還是10分鐘之後,大部分人找出解決方案,你們可以看到,要解決問題就要突破「功能固定」的障礙。
你看那個盒子,只是把它看成是放大頭針的容器,但它還有另一個功能,就是作為燭臺,這就是蠟燭問題,現在我想告訴大家一個利用蠟燭問題的實驗,是科學家Sam Glucksberg所做,他目前在美國普林斯頓大學,這顯示出激勵的威力。
他是這樣做的,先把實驗參與者叫到一起,說:「我要給你們計時,看你們要用多少時間來解決這個問題」,他對第一組說:「我要給你們計時,以建立標準,看看平均用多少時間來解決這類問題」,對於第二組,他提出獎勵辦法,說:「如果速度排名在前25%之內,就能拿到5美元;如果是今天測試中最快的一個,就可以拿到20美元」,這是好些年前了,算上通脹,對於幾分鐘的實驗,這些錢算是很可觀的,這是很好的激勵因素。
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Now many people begin trying to thumbtack the candle to the wall. Doesn't work. Somebody, some people, and I saw somebody kind of make the motion over here. Some people have a great idea where they light the match, melt the side of the candle, try to adhere it to the wall. It's an awesome idea. Doesn't work. And eventually, after five or 10 minutes, Most people figure out the solution, Which you can see here. The key to to overcome what's called functional fixedness. You look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the tacks. But it can also have this other function, as a platform for the candle. The candle problem.
Now I want to tell you about an experiment using the candle problem, done by a scientist named Sam Glucksberg, who is now at Princeton University in the U.S. This shows the power of incentives. Here's what he did. He gathered his participants. And he said, "I'm going to time you. How quickly you can solve this problem?" To one group he said, I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem.
To the second group he offered rewards. He said, "If you're in the top 25 percent of the fastest times you get five dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today you get 20 dollars." Now this is several years ago. Adjusted for inflation. It's a decent sum of money for a few minutes of work. It's a nice motivator.
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問題:受激勵組解決問題的時間要比其他組快多少?答案:平均來說,他們的用時比其他組要多3.5分鐘,3.5分鐘,沒道理吧,我是美國人,我相信自由市場,不該是這樣的吧!
如果你想人們表現更好,你會給予獎勵,對嗎?獎金、傭金、他們的寫實秀,對他們形成激勵,這是商業運作的規律,但事實並不是這樣,你的激勵本來是用以銳化思維並促進創造力,但得到了反效果,它鈍化思維並對創造力造成障礙。
這個實驗的有趣之處是這並不是偶發失常,它不斷地重複發生,在差不多40年的時間裡,這些有條件的激勵因素,「如果你這樣,就能得到這些」,在一些情況下的確有用,但對於很多任務而言,它們並不可行,或者適得其反,這是最有力的發現之一,以社會學的領域來說,也是最被忽略的發現之一。
我花了好些年來研究,人類動機的科學,特別研究是外在動機和內在動機的互相作用,我告訴你們,這一點都不相似,如果你研究科學,你會發現錯配存在於科學知識和商業運作之間,令人擔心的是我們的營商機制,想想商業背後的假設和協定,我們如何激勵他人,如何運用人力資源,我們的商業運營體系完全是圍繞外在動機,即蘿蔔和大棒交相誘脅,這對20世紀的許多任務來說是很好,但對於21世紀的任務而言,死板的獎懲手段是不可行的,通常不可行,且會適得其反。
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Question: How much faster did this group solve the problem? Answer: It took them, on average, three and a half minutes longer. Three and a half minutes longer. Now this makes no sense right? I mean, I'm an American. I believe in free markets. That's not how it's supposed to work. Right? (Laughter) If you want people to perform better, you reward them. Right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them. That's how business works. But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity. And it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.
And what's interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over and over again, for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators, if you do this, then you get that, work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don't work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science. And also one of the most ignored.
I spent the last couple of years looking at the science of human motivation. Particularly the dynamics of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators. And I'm telling you, it's not even close. If you look at the science, there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And what's alarming here is that our business operating system -- think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses, how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources -- it's built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks. That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn't work, often doesn't work, and often does harm. Let me show you what I mean.
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我來解釋一下,Glucksberg做了另一個相似的實驗,他以稍微不同的方式來提出問題,就像這樣,把蠟燭粘到牆上,讓蠟不會滴到桌上,同樣的作法,你說:「我們來計時,以形成平均標準」,你說:「我們進行激勵方法」,這次的情況會怎樣?這次,受激勵組贏了其他組,為什麼?因為當大頭釘在盒子外面時,問題就變得十分簡單,不是嗎?
那些「如果-那麼」公式,有條件的獎勵能發揮很好的作用,對這種任務而言,如果我們有一套簡單的規則和清晰目標的話,獎勵本身的性質縮小我們的關注點,集中了注意力,這就是為什麼在很多情況下它能發揮作用,對於這樣的任務目標縮小了,你看到目標就在那可以一矢中的作用很明顯,但對於現實的蠟燭問題你就不能這樣做了,答案不在這裡,是在周邊你要到處尋找,事實上,獎勵縮窄了我們的關注點,限制了我們的可能性,我要告訴大家為什麼這是那麼重要。
在西歐、亞洲很多地方、北美、澳洲,白領階層越來越少做釘在盒外的工作,而越來越多僅做限定住的工作,那種慣性、遵照規則的左腦工作,即會計、財務分析及電腦程式編寫的工作,現在都很容易外包,很容易透過自動化操作,軟體可以更快將工作完成,全世界低成本的服務供應商可以用更便宜的方式完成,所以重要的是更多右腦的創造力、構思力,想想你的工作,想想你自己的工作,你現在面對的問題,甚至我們在這裡談論的問題,是否有一系列清晰的規則,以及唯一的答案?否。
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So Glucksberg did another experiment similar to this where he presented the problem in a slightly different way, like this up here. Okay? Attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table. Same deal. You: we're timing for norms. You: we're incentivizing. What happened this time? This time, the incentivized group kicked the other group's butt. Why? Because when the tacks are out of the box it's pretty easy isn't it? (Laughter)
If-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind. That's why they work in so many cases. And so, for tasks like this, a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there, zoom straight ahead to it, they work really well. But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be looking like this. The solution is not over here. The solution is on the periphery. You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility.
Let me tell you why this is so important. In western Europe, in many parts of Asia, in North America, in Australia, white collar workers are doing less of this kind of work, and more of this kind of work. That routine, rule-based, left brain work, certain kinds of accounting, certain kinds of financial analysis, certain kinds of computer programing, has become fairly easy to outsource, fairly easy to automate. Software can do it faster. Low-cost providers around the world can do it cheaper. So what really matters are the more right-brained creative, conceptual kinds of abilities.
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那些規則讓人很迷惑,而答案,如果有的話,都是出人意表,並且不明顯,這裡的所有人,都在處理他們各自的蠟燭問題,以及任何種類、任何領域中的蠟燭問題,那些「如果-那麼」獎勵式,環繞在我們所建立商業活動旁的事物,其實並不可行,這一切都會讓我瘋掉,這不是…,這不是感覺,我是律師,我不相信感覺,這不是哲學,我是美國人,我不相信哲學,(笑聲),這是事實,在我家鄉華府,這是確切的事實
我用一個例子來解釋,我列出一些證據,因為我不是在講故事,我是在陳述案件,各位陪審團大人們,證據有以下這些,Dan Ariely是當代偉大經濟學家之一,他和三位同事研究一些麻省理工的學生,他們把一些遊戲發給學生,遊戲涉及創造力、動作技巧,還有專注力,然後根據表現向他們提供三種水平的獎勵,小中大三種獎勵,如果你做得很好,你就會拿到大獎,依此類推,之後發生了什麼?
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Think about your own work. Think about your own work. Are the problems that you face, or even the problems we've been talking about here, are those kinds of problems -- do they have a clear set of rules, and a single solution? No. The rules are mystifying. The solution, if it exists at all, is surprising and not obvious. Everybody in this room is dealing with their own version of the candle problem. And for candle problems of any kind, in any field, those if-then rewards, the things around which we've built so many of our businesses, don't work.
Now, I mean it makes me crazy. And this is not -- here's the thing. This is not a feeling. Okay? I'm a lawyer. I don't believe in feelings. This is not a philosophy. I'm an American. I don't believe in philosophy. (Laughter) This is a fact. Or, as we say in my hometown of Washington D.C., a true fact. (Laughter) (Applause) Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let me marshal the evidence here. Because I'm not telling you a story. I'm making a case.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, some evidence: Dan Ariely, one of the great economists of our time, he and three colleagues, did a study of some MIT students. They gave these MIT students a bunch of games. Games that involved creativity, and motor skills, and concentration. And the offered them, for performance, three levels of rewards. Small reward, medium reward, large reward. Okay? If you do really well you get the large reward, on down. What happened? As long as the task involved only mechanical skill bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. Okay? But one the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.
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只要任務僅涉及機械性技巧,獎勵就會像預期那樣發揮作用,獎勵越大,表現越好,但當任務需要雛型式的認知技巧時,獎勵越大,表現越差,於是他們說:「好,我們來看看是否存在文化偏見,我們去印度的馬都來做驗證」,在那裡生活水平較低,在北美中等程度的獎勵,在那裡更具吸引力,同樣的條件,一些遊戲,三種程度的獎勵,發生了什麼?
拿到中獎勵的人做得並不比可以拿到小獎勵的人好,但這次,可以拿到大獎的人做得最差,我們做了三次實驗,發現在其中九個任務裡面的八個,越大的激勵會導致越差的表現,這是否是一些過於情緒化的社會主義陰謀?不,這些是來自麻省理工學院、卡內基美隆管院和芝加哥大學的經濟學家,您們知道是誰贊助這個研究嗎?美國聯邦儲備銀行,那是美國的經驗。
讓我們來到倫敦政經學院,倫敦政經學院-LSE,是十一名諾貝爾經濟學獎得主的母校,是偉大經濟學思想家的搖籃,例如:索羅斯、哈耶克和滾石樂團主唱Mick Jagger(笑聲),上個月,只是上個月,LSE的經濟學家查看了公司內部獎勵績效的51個研究,經濟學家說:「我們發現,金錢激勵對總體績效會產生負面的影響」,有錯配存在於科學知識和實際商業操作之間。
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Then they said, "Okay let's see if there's any cultural bias here. Lets go to Madurai, India and test this." Standard of living is lower. In Madurai, a reward that is modest in North American standards, is more meaningful there. Same deal. A bunch of games, three levels of rewards. What happens? People offered the medium level of rewards did no better than people offered the small rewards. But this time, people offered the highest rewards, they did the worst of all. In eight of the nine tasks we examined across three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance.
Is this some kind of touchy feely socialist conspiracy going on here? No. These are economists from MIT, from Carnegie Mellon, from the University of Chicago. And do you know who sponsored this research? The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. That's the American experience.
Let's go across the pond to the London School of Economics. LSE, London School of Economics. Alma mater of 11 Nobel Laureates in economics. Training ground for great economic thinkers like George Soros, and Friedrich Hayek, and Mick Jagger. (Laughter) Last month, just last month, economists at LSE looked at 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, inside of companies. Here's what the economists there said, "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance."
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我擔心的是,我們處於經濟崩潰的時刻,很多機構進行的決策及關於人才和人員的政策,是根據過時和不加調查的假設且是基於民間傳統,而不是科學,如果我們真的想走出此番經濟困境,如果我們真想做好21世紀那些決定性任務,解決的方法就是不要多做錯事,用更甜的蘿蔔來引誘人,或者用更威猛的大棒來恐嚇人,我們需要全新的方法。
有關這一切的好消息是,一直研究動機的科學家給了我們這個新方法,這是一個更基於內在動機的方法,我們想做事,因為它能產生影響,因為我們喜歡,因為它們有趣,因為這是重要大事的一部分,我覺得,新的營商機制圍繞著三個因素來運轉,自主、掌控和目的,自主,是主宰自己生活的欲望;掌控,是把重要事情做得越來越好的欲望;目的,是我們想達成的渴望,即為大我服務,這些是全新運營系統的組成元素。
對我們商界而言,我今天只想談自主,20世紀出現了管理這一理念,管理並非自然產生,它不是一棵樹,而是一部電視機,是人發明的,但不等於可以永久使用,管理是個好東西,傳統的管理理念很不錯,如果你要求惟命是從的話,但如果你想參與管理,那麼自我引導的效果會更好,我來說說一些例子,是關於自我引導的激進理念,那是說,你不會看到它的全貎,但會看到一些有趣事物萌芽,因為這意味著確實、公平地向人們提供適當的報酬,然後放下錢的問題,給人們很多自主的機會。
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There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And what worries me, as we stand here in the rubble of the economic collapse, is that too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, and if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.
And the good news about all of this is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they're interesting, because they are part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.
I want to talk today only about autonomy. In the 20th century, we came up with this idea of management. Management did not emanate from nature. Management is like -- it's not a tree. It's a television set. Okay? Somebody invented it. And it doesn't mean it's going to work forever. Management is great. Traditional notions of management are great if you want compliance. But if you want engagement, self-direction works better.
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我來說一些例子,有多少人聽過Atlassian公司,好像沒過半數。
Atlassian是一家澳洲軟體公司,他們做事的方式很酷,他們每年有幾次對工程師說:「接下來的24小時你可以做任何想做的事,只要那不是你日常的工作,幹任何你想幹的事都可以」,於是,工程師們利用這時間,補寫出程式編碼中不足的部份,提出漂亮的創意程式,然後就在下班之前,在一個狂歡、原創及全體參與的會議上,展示他們開發的所有東西給組員和其他同事看,然後善盡身為澳洲人的義務-舉杯痛飲,他們把這些日子叫聯邦快遞日,為什麼?因為你隔天就要把點子送到,這很好,這大大違反了商標條例,但很聰明。
一天的高度自主可以生產出全面的軟體修正,那是本來可能永遠都不會出現的事,這樣的方法很好,因此Atlassian把它推到下一個層次,騰出20%的時間,Google就這樣做了,很出名,在那裡工程師可以用20%的時間來研發自己喜歡的東西,他們可以自主控制時間、控制任務、團隊和技術,超高程度的自律,如你所知的那樣,Google每年有大概一半的新產品是用那20%的時間研發出來的,像是Gmail、 Orkut和Google新聞這些東西。
我再跟大家說一個更激進的例子,有一個東西叫「只問結果工作環境」ROWE(Results Only Work Environment),是兩名美國顧問首創的,北美已有十多家公司採用,在這環境,人們沒有工作安排表,他們想上班時才上班,不用在某個時間或任何時間來到辦公室,他們只需要完成自己的工作,他們怎麼做、什麼時間做、在什麼地方做,完全由他們自己決定,在這些環境中,員工自行選擇是否參加會議,結果,生產力幾乎全面上升,員工參與度上升,員工滿意度上升,離職率下降。
自主、掌控和目的,這些是新做事方式的組成元素,有些人看到可能會說:「聽起來不錯,但這只不過是烏托邦」,我會說:「不,我有證據」,1990年代中期,微軟開始做Encarta電子百科全書,他們運用了所有正確的動機激勵公式,所有正確的動機激勵,他們雇用專業人士編寫並編輯數以千計的文章,高薪聘請經理來監督整個過程,保證不超支且準時完工,幾年後,他們開始做另一部百科全書,以不同的形式,只是做來玩的,大家都是義務工作,沒拿一分錢,來做是因為自己喜歡。
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Let me give you some examples of some kind of radical notions of self direction. What this means -- you don't see a lot of it, but you see the first stirrings of something really interesting going on. Because what it means is paying people adequately and fairly, absolutely. Getting the issue of money off the table. And then giving people lots of autonomy. Let me give you some examples.
How many of you have heard of the company Atlassian? It looks like less than half. (Laughter) Atlassian is an Australian software company. And they do something incredibly cool. A few times a year they tell their engineers, "Go for the next 24 hours and work on anything you want, as long as it's not part of your regular job. Work on anything you want." So that engineers use this time to come up with a cool patch for code, come up with an elegant hack. Then they present all of the stuff that they've developed to their teammates, to the rest of the company, in this wild and wooly all hands meeting at the end of the day. And then, being Australians, everybody has a beer.
They call them FedEx Days. Why? Because you have to deliver something overnight. It's pretty. It's not bad. It's a huge trademark violation. But it's pretty clever. (Laughter) That one day of intense autonomy has produced a whole array of software fixes that might never have existed.
And it's worked so well that Atlassian has taken it to the next level with 20 Percent Time. Done, famously, at Google. Where engineers can work, spend 20 percent of their time working on anything they want. They have autonomy over their time, their task, their team, their technique. Okay? Radical amounts of autonomy, And at Google, as many of you know, about half of the new products in a typical year are birthed during that 20 Percent Time. Things like Gmail, Orkut, Google News.
Let me give you an even more radical example of it. Something called the Results Only Work Environment. The ROWE. Created by two American consultants, in place in place at about a dozen companies around North America. In a ROWE people don't have schedules. They show up when they want. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time, or any time. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, where they do it, is totally up to them. Meetings in these kinds of environments are optional.
What happens? Almost across the board, productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up, turnover goes down. Autonomy, mastery and purpose, These are the building blocks of a new way of doing things. Now some of you might look at this and say, "Hmm, that sounds nice. But it's Utopian." And I say, "Nope. I have proof."
The mid 1990s, Microsoft started an encyclopedia called Encarta. They had deployed all the right incentives. All the right incentives. They paid professionals to write and edit thousands of articles. Well compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time. A few years later another encyclopedia got started. Different model, right? Do it for fun. No one gets paid a cent, or a Euro or a Yen. Do it because you like to do it.
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如果十年前,你在某個地方見到一位經濟學家,你說:「嗨,我有兩種創建百科全書的方式,如果兩種同時競爭,哪一種會贏」?十年前,你在地球上任何地方找不到一位清醒的經濟學家,能夠預測維基百科全書模式,這就是這兩種方式之間的大戰,這就是動機激勵的兩大拳王之爭,這就是「馬尼拉的震撼」,內在動機對抗外在動機,自主、掌控和目的,對抗蘿蔔和大棒,誰贏了?內在動機:自主、掌控和目的大獲全勝。
我來總結一下,在科學知識和商業實際操作之間有錯配,這就是科學知識:
一、 那些20世紀的獎勵,我們所認為那些營商,自然組成部分的激勵是有效的,但僅僅在一個十分狹窄的範圍內有效。
二、 那些有條件的獎勵經常損害創造力
三、 高效能的秘密,不是獎勵和懲罰,而是看不見的內在動力,為工作而工作的動力,工作的動力是因為工作重要,這是最好的部分。
我們已經知道,科學證實了我們心中所想,因此如果我們要糾正,科學知識和商業實際操作之間的錯配,如果把我們這些動力和動力理念帶到21世紀,如果我們拋開這個懶惰、危險的蘿蔔、大棒意識,我們就可以鞏固我們的事業,可以解決很多蠟燭問題,我們可能,可能,可以改變世界,報告完畢。
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Now if you had, just 10 years ago, if you had gone to an economist, anywhere, And said, "Hey, I've got these two different models for creating an encyclopedia. If they went head to head, who would win?" 10 years ago you could not have found a single sober economist anywhere on planet Earth, who would have predicted the Wikipedia model.
This is the titanic battle between these two approaches. This is the Ali-Frazier of motivation. Right? This is the Thrilla' in Manila. Alright? Intrinsic motivators versus extrinsic motivators. Autonomy, mastery and purpose, versus carrot and sticks. And who wins? Intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery and purpose, in a knockout. Let me wrap up.
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.
And here's the best part. Here's the best part. We already know this. The science confirms what we know in our hearts. So, if we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does, If we bring our motivation, notions of motivation into the 21st century, if we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, we can solve a lot of those candle problems, and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world. I rest my case.