Book Review: Drive

Daniel Pink understands runners.  Maybe that's why I like him so much.

As with his earlier works that I've read (Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind), Daniel Pink has taken some important, emerging concepts and put them into terms even the most inexperienced leader can understand. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us examines "Motivation 3.0," an understanding of what motivates modern knowledge workers, as differentiated from Motivation 2.0, which is more suited for Industrial Age companies and big bureaucracies.

Obviously, this is where Creatives come in.

Pink looks at how employees are traditionally motivated, with an emphasis on salaries and bonuses, the whole "carrot and stick" approach.   Then he explores the effectiveness of those methods and looks for something better.   What comes next is a discussion of three key factors that affect intrinsic motivation, which is FAR more powerful than anything a leader can offer extrinsically.  That's not to say salaries don't matter, but he makes the point a few times that the purpose behind salaries is to keep money from being an issue, so you and your employees can focus on more important things.  Pay people well, but don't expect money to be the sole, or even the primary, motivator.

He focuses on three important aspects of the working environment that tend to increase motivation: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.  These sound like the sorts of things that Creatives all seek, no matter what their specific field.  The know their talents and their strengths, and they don't need someone looking over their shoulders. They want to be as talented as they can, improving their skills and, for many of them, being the best in their field.  And they certainly have a sense of purpose; true Creatives have a real passion for what they do and prefer to nurture that rather than focusing on dollars and cents.

This isn't just a 215-page opinion piece (unlike way too many leadership books out there).  Pink points out that "there's a gap between what science knows and what business does," and he tries to get us to close that gap.  He reviewed the work of quite a few researchers who focus on leadership and motivation and presents their work in a way we can all easily understand.  It becomes pretty obvious from their work than leaders can get more from their Creatives (and maybe at a lower cost) by looking at these factors rather than following Motivation 2.0 techniques.  Of course, it's always useful from an academic perspective to look for research that challenges your own theory, since it makes your perspective stronger when you look at all sides, and there isn't a lot of that kind of research reflected here, but maybe there's just nothing out there to support older styles of leading.

The next-to-last section is a "toolkit" to help you you implement the ideas presented throughout the book.  If this final section was all there was to it -- and for many authors, it is -- you could write this off as another quickie "how-to" guide with little value.  But with the basis in sound academic work as a foundation, the toolkit is instead a perfect complement that makes this an outstanding book for helping you lead Creatives.

I'm sure if I handed this book to my boss he'd reject it out of hand...unfortunately, a lot of bosses will. They don't have enough faith in their employees to see the things Pink sees.  The sad thing is, if they don't think they're employees are that great, you have to wonder why they employ them.

But this is where Drive offers you an advantage.   If you can use the ideas and techniques Pink advocates, while others stick with Motivation 2.0 methods, you're liable to get greater productivity from your Creatives than others do.  If two firms have equally skilled Creatives, but one has leadership more in tune with Creatives' needs, then that firm is likely to be more successful. And you want that firm to be yours.

Book Review: Wikinomics

A colleague of mine got all excited about an idea for our organization last year.

"We should have a wiki!!," he said. "It'll be a great way to gather and share a lot of information. And it'll solve a lot of problems for us." When I asked him exactly what problems it would help us with, he repeated "it'll solve a lot," with nothing more specific than that.

He met with some folks at the National Academy of Public Administration to discuss his idea, and one of the senior people there said, "You sound like a Wikinomics guy." "What's that?," asked my colleague. True to form for this particular fellow, he'd jumped into providing us answers to problems he couldn't identify, and along the way ignored the basic research that might have told him that someone got there before him.

Sadly, the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything are similarly guilty.

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams offer up a good description of modern trends in information sharing and collaboration. They discuss many of the methods by which innovation and creativity are being supported by technology that makes it easier to share. Readers might find the book a little dated because it was written pre-iPhone and before the proliferation of Facebook apps, but it still provides some interesting discussion.

Unfortunately, it also provides a lot of cheerleading.

Tapscott and Williams quickly slide from describing a phenomenon and its implications to openly advocating new practices and dismissing the potential consequences as irrelevant. It's all right to take a position based on evidence and rational argument, but the book quickly devolves into hyperbole. Comparing song mixing mashups to the Renaissance is taking things a bit too far.

For example, the authors promote businesses opening up their intellectual property to their customers so they can tinker with it, but they ignore the the profit incentive that drove the original innovation. They castigate Apple for limiting the customization early iPhone users could perform on their phones and the company's unwillingness to provide support for hacked products. As the years since then have shown, of course, Apple has created a new model for customer innovation that was slowly in progress when this book was first written, something the authors seemed not to consider at the time. The Apple model further allows apps to be shared throughout their entire customer base, rather than simply among the "geek elite," which would be the likely result of the authors' recommendations.

Throughout the book there runs a belief that today's innovative kids, who need to be freed from the ties of intellectual property laws, will continue to adapt and adjust their consumer electronics now and forever. The authors never approach the question of what will happen when these kids grow up and have to deal with jobs, mortgages, and other responsibilities that will encroach on their innovation time. This perception that in the future everyone will innovate isn't backed up by any research, merely by opinion.

This is a problem throughout the book. Various claims remain unsupported by data. For instance, the authors claim that music companies should encourage mashups because they lead to higher music sales by their artists. Nowhere, though, do the authors offer any evidence to support that claim, evidence that a good doctoral student should be able to collect for a dissertation.

Once you ignore data and evidence it's easy to ignore the negative implications of what you're advocating. They largely ignore, for instance, the problem of bad information being injected into decision making by content providers who really don't know what they're talking about or worse, who are deliberately loading bad info into the system. Yes, they make the point that the Encyclopedia Britannica has as many errors as Wikipedia, but at the Encyclopedia, someone can get fired for that, a fate that doesn't befall the person at home voluntarily editing Wikipedia pages. What happens to science in this environment? Is "peer review" still worth anything when the reviewers aren't peers? The authors stick to the positives but ignore the negatives.

And that, ultimately, is what dooms this book. Their conclusions may very well be sound, they just might have the right answers, but by not taking a hard look at the positives and negatives there's no way to really know.

By only presenting one side of an issue while implying they've considered both sides, they present the reader with poorly developed arguments that sound good enough to be ok, arguments that many readers will accept and act upon without question.

Which sounds remarkably like the effect of their wikinomics model as a whole.

Book Review: A Whole New Mind

In A Whole New Mind author Daniel Pink first outlines a bit of human history. He describes the Industrial Age, in which assembly line workers were the key, and the transition to the Information Age, when knowledge workers reigned supreme. Now he sees us moving into the Conceptual Age, where Creatives will be the main ingredient for success.

This, Pink argues, increases the need for right-brained thinking, not to replace the more logical left-brained thinking, but rather, to complement it. Success will come to those who can develop ideas, who can give customers the design or the story they desire, who can do more than just use current knowledge and instead will develop new knowledge.

The first part of the book describes the emerging Conceptual Age and highlights Asia, Automation, and Abundance as prime reasons for it. Asia, he argues, has taken over much of the industrial work and is now taking much of the knowledge work as well. Automation, which was at one time replacing assembly line workers, is replacing many knowledge workers now. In both of these cases the need has been created for employees to turn their attention to doing something beyond just manipulating existing knowledge. Abundance, he says, has put us (well, the developed world, anyway) in a state where, since we already have so much -- especially in terms of material goods, information, and leisure time -- customers are looking for something extra (e.g., unique design, a captivating story) to distinguish between different products and ideas. Whether he means to or not, he leaves an open challenge for readers to identify other factors underlying the shift to the Conceptual Age.

The second part of the book gets into the six "senses" that Pink says will guide our lives in the Conceptual Age: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. He does a great job of explaining these concepts and demonstrating why they're so important, then goes a step further and helps readers understand how to develop these senses themselves. I have to admit, I started doing some of these exercises immediately, and within a short time I've found myself noticing things I never would have seen before, things that were always around me but which went unnoticed. Like his earlier book Free Agent Nation the author gets pretty detailed in his suggestions. He recommends individual techniques, useful books, and even some classes, and while not everyone can do that last one, for the price of a book Pink shares some of the key lessons he learned when he took them.

A Whole New Mind really helps introduce the reader to new perspectives. Creatives tend to be pretty right-brained anyway, and for them this book is probably most helpful in terms of putting into words what they already experience. For those who might not have such strong right-brain skills, especially those who may be leading right-brainers, Daniel Pink offers some great insights and exercises to help build those skills.

Review: Closing the Innovation Gap

Judy Estrin is worried about the innovation gap that's developed in America. And if all her information is right, she has reason to be.

Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy examines the macro-level system necessary to support innovation as well as the company-level environment that supports good innovation. Estrin, a Silicon Valley veteran with plenty of successes behind her (and lots more where that came from still in front of her), explores what's necessary for innovation to happen, and rounds up her professional friends and colleagues whose own experiences bolster her main points.

Her discussions of corporate support for innovation are particularly useful for those of us who are leading Creatives. Our work is all about innovation, and if we don't find a way to foster that, we're out of business. Many of her specifics are more suited to large corporations -- Google comes to mind -- but the principles are useful for businesses of all sizes. And if you're a small firm now, but hoping to become a big one, this gives you an idea of how to shape that growth. Estrin makes the point a few times that the days of coming up with an idea in your garage and making billions of dollars are pretty much over. A more formal structure, with more people of diverse backgrounds, seems to be more important now than ever. With the ideas presented here, leaders are better able to design the kind of environment needed to foster innovation.

The portions of the book dealing with the innovation "ecosystem" give leaders an idea of where their Creatives are coming from and how it might be more difficult to find them in the future. She talks about such things as education, cultural attitudes toward science and engineering, funding for the arts, financial support for basic research, corporate and academic preferences for short-term rather than long-term results, and the broader need for instant gratification rather than a longer focus that has gripped the country in recent years. These sections of the book offer leaders a better understanding of what's needed to support a culture of innovation, with lessons they can apply on a smaller scale in their own firms. While fixing the problems in this ecosystem and closing the innovation gap might seem beyond the abilities of small businesses, there are some efforts that smaller firms can make, and if nothing else, leaders can identify big-picture problems and try to work around them.

Unlike many authors today, Estrin doesn't point to 9/11 as THE reason for current problems...innovation was on a downhill slide as early as the 1980s, when talented American college students started seeing careers in finance as preferable to science and engineering, and the creation of wealth became more important than the creation of the actual ideas and inventions that lead to wealth. But she agrees that 9/11 hurt, in part by shocking the US economy, but also by leading to stricter immigration practices that made it tougher for foreign students to come to the US and stay after graduating. In days of old, many of these students would come to the US and then elect to stay after finishing their degrees. These days, though, between the difficulty of getting student and work visas, combined with emerging opportunities in their home countries, even those who do still come to the US often plan to return home afterwards. I've seen examples of this myself. When I was pursuing my PhD in the early 2000s we had 4 Chinese students in my cohort, all of whom returned home. While teaching in Singapore this year I had two students, one Indonesian and one Chinese, who plan to go to the US to pursue their PhD, then return home to bring that knowledge back to their countries. We can probably all find examples of this in our own experience.

Estrin's writing style is very nice and easy to follow. She jumps around from executive to executive, but following the identity of all the speakers isn't important; following what they say is. Her political views come through strongly at a few points, and if you're of the opposing view, that might get in the way of your appreciation for her message, but it shouldn't. Closing the Innovation Gap provides an important wake up call for a country that isn't used to being second-best, and offers some good ideas for avoiding that fate.

Book Review: Traffic

Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) breaks down the reality of traffic into terms we can all understand. Through his explanations, analyses, and anecdotes, he opens the reader's mind to different perspectives and encourages new ways of thinking. It's more than just traffic; the book provides a new lens for examining any common task, anything we take for granted. It also encourages exploring the potential consequences of your actions, future effects that might contradict the conventional wisdom. In doing so, the author provides Creatives with the spark to ignite new thinking about their respective fields.

Traffic shows how the way we think we drive, and the way we actually do, are two VERY different things. It challenges the reader to confront biases and accepted ways of thinking, and demonstrates how perception changes when perspective shifts. For Creatives, this helps challenge notions of conventional wisdom and accepted truths. Sure, some truths are accepted because they are, well, true, but in many cases Creatives would benefit from at least taking a look at their beliefs to see what, if anything, is coloring them.

Exploring consequences carefully is useful for those in strategic planning positions, or Creatives who try to influence others, such as those in the advertising industry. Vanderbilt looks at why common traffic conditions exist and explores the effects of different solutions. In many cases we find the most commonly suggested solutions actually add to the problem. Very often it is the counterintuitive solution that actually fixes the problem. He makes the point that you really need to examine the past effects of similar options rather than just accepting the common sense answer. Traffic reminds us to carefully evaluate the likely results of our actions.

Traffic is not a book about design, but it encourages designers to look at different viewpoints from alternative perspectives. It is not a book about strategic planning, but it leads planners to plot out the effects of their recommended courses of action. It is not a book about leading Creatives, but it helps us understand just how challenging things get when an odd variable - people - is involved.

Review: Free Agent Nation

Free Agent Nation is designed for the employee rather than the leader. Let’s put that up front. Still, the book is very useful for leaders for a couple reasons. First, because you might be a free agent yourself, "leading" an ad hoc collection of other free agents, and if you’re in this position you’ll definitely benefit from the book. Second, as a boss in a company you may have contract employees who are free agents, or full time employees who work in the same style as free agents, and this book will help you understand their perspective. Either way, Free Agent Nation is a good book for you.

Daniel Pink spent a year interviewing people around the country about this increasingly common style of work. Though this leads to an anecdotal, rather than quantitative, research method, once you put enough anecdotes together you can see the trends emerge. Pink discusses the concept of The Organization Man and explains the traditional balance between job loyalty and job security. He goes on to show how both employees and employers have shifted away from that model, and how employees are leading the way to the increasingly popular model of free agency. While we have always had temps, independent contractors, and other free agents in society, the numbers are growing dramatically and their impact on corporate operations is increasing. It is no longer just a matter of calling the local temp agency and getting a substitute for a receptionist who’s out sick…free agents are involved at all levels of the company, in some cases even including the leadership.

If you’re leading your own creative microbusiness and working with independent Creatives, or if you’re interested in doing that someday, this book will set you in the right direction. It explains many of the opportunities that free agency offers and provides some hints on how to take advantage of them. Pink’s use of first person accounts allows readers to more easily see themselves in the same situation and helps them find examples most appropriate for their goals. Perhaps more importantly, he identifies the challenges facing free agents and helps the reader overcome them, seeing them as a challenge to be dealt with rather than an obstacle leading to failure.

If instead you’re in a larger firm where many of your Creatives are free agents, this book will still be helpful. Pink examines the motivation and objectives of free agents, helping you understand why they choose this professional path so you can better fit them into your corporate structure. Whether or not to use free agents is an important management decision, so you really need to understand something about these workers if you’re going to hire them or if, once you do get them, you’re going to make the best use of them.

The book can be a fast read but don’t be surprised if you need to refer back to it more than once to soak it all in. For many of us this is a very different way of approaching work, and it takes time and thought to really understand what it’s all about. You can check out Free Agent Nation from your library, but maybe you should get your own copy so you don’t rack up a bunch of late fees.

Review: The Four-Hour Work Week

I'd been hearing about Timothy Ferriss' The Four-Hour Work Week from a lot of people but hadn't picked up a copy yet. Though I'm probably the last person in America to read it, I was still surprised by quite a bit of what I found. No one had spoiled it for me yet!!

The basics of the book are this: for many people (which he calls the "New Rich") success isn't measured by how much money they make, but instead, by how well they use their time and live their lives, but they don't know how to break the 40 (or more)-hour workweek paradigm. He discusses how lots of folks talk about working hard for years so they can have a lot of money to do the things they want to do now...and Ferriss shows that you don't have to spend years and years getting to that point but instead should consider getting to enjoy life now. Part of the solution comes in how you live, and he discusses how technology, good information, and the occasional reality check, can give you the ability to do the things you want. Perhaps more importantly (and definitely the more difficult of the two) he shows how you can work smarter to do what you need to do to live that life, not only making enough money to do the things you want, but also having the time to do them.

He refers to his model as DEAL, and while I won't go into what each part of the acronym means (you really should read the book to get a full understanding) I'll tell you that it has to do with figuring out what's really important, getting rid of those tasks and requirements that aren't, automating the things you can to free up time, and ultimately, liberating yourself from the standard way of doing business. It helps you go from "living to work" to "working to live."

While this might sound like a Pollyanna version of the world, what surprised me most about this book was how I realized I'm already doing some of the things he mentioned, in terms of taking advantage of opportunities at work to do the things I want outside of work. For example, I'm interested in a particular region of the world, so I arranged to work on a study for another government organization that deals with that region. As a result, when I travel there for work I always add on a few vacation days to see friends or visit new places. Through a series of proposals I managed to create a strategic planning unit for us, in which I work, and as part of that I can justify presenting papers at academic conferences, which allows me to stay current in my academic profession as well as my day-to-day job. I've managed to arrange a couple sabbaticals, including last year's to Afghanistan (not exactly fun, but definitely rewarding) and my upcoming trip to Singapore as a Fulbright Scholar. In all cases I've shown how my regular work will still get done, and my outside work will contribute to my job by enhancing my knowledge and my experience. And let's not forget morale: if I'd been turned down for these I'd be pretty miserable but as it is I do my best work because I know there are people watching to see how I do, plus I figure they've given to me so I need to give to them. I'm not quite at the 4-hour workweek point, but I can see how people can get there.

The book is well-written and fun to read, even the one chapter that gets pretty technical. It's filed with examples that help you envision yourself in the same situation and make it easier to break the paradigm of the traditional working style. Yeah, I sometimes wonder if all those "real life" examples are real or if they're just created to make a point, but in the end, does it really matter? The point is made.

The book won't be for everyone because it's based on the assumption that we don't want to spend our whole lives working. There are, of course, plenty of people who are content to do just that. They like the thrill of a tight deadline, they love closing a deal, they'd rather do that than be on vacation. Some jobs also don't lend themselves to breaking the paradigm, such as being a police office or a doctor (though many of the techniques he discusses will still add time to your day). If you really want to have that career, then much of this really isn't for you.

But how about Creatives, and those who lead them? This will apply to you, big time! Whether you're working in a large firm or an entrepreneur, there is plenty in here to make your life better. Don't try to do it all in one big step; work through it slowly and let your comfort level adjust. In the end, you need to ask yourself why, exactly, you work the way you do. Once you start asking that question, you're on your way. The bottom line is, we have a finite amount of time in this world...why not make the most of it?