I M Perfect lady

I picked up Daniel H. Pink's book, "Drive" at the Library and just began reading it. How interesting it is to see how our "drive".  What drives us and what sustains us and how it is now evolving out of the old paradigm.

Under the heading, "How we do what we do", he writes.

"Begin with complexity. Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: "algorithmic" and "heuristic".  An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion. That is, there's an algorithm for solving it.  A heuristic task is the opposite. Precisely because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution. Working as a grocery checkout clerk is mostly algorithmic. You do pretty much the same thing over and over in a certain way.  Creating an ad campaign is mostly heuristic.  You have to come up with something new."

"During the twentieth century, most work was algorithmic – and not just jobs where you turned the same screw the same way all day long. Even when we traded blue collars for white, the tasks we carried out were often routine.  That is, we could reduce much of what we did, in accounting, law, computer programming, and other fields – to a script, a spec sheet, a formula, or a series of steps that produced a right answer.  But today, in much of North America, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Austrailia, routine white collar work is disappearing. It's racing off shore to wherever it can be done the cheapest. In India, Bulgaria, the Phillipines, and other countries, lower-paid workers essencially run the algorithm, figure out the correct answer and deliver it instantaneously from their computer to someone six thousand miles away."

"But offshoring is just one pressure on rule-based, left-brain work. Just as oxen and then forklifts replaced simple physical labor, computers are replacing simple intellectual labor. So, while outsourcing is just beginning to pick up speed, software can already preform many rule-based, professional functions better, more quickly, and more cheaply than we can.  That means that your cousin the CPA, if he's doing mostly routine work, faces competition not just from five-hundred-dollar-a-month accountants in Manila, but from tax preparation programs anyone can download for thirty dollars.  The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimate that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.  A key reason: Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artisitic, empathetic, nonroutine work generally cannot."

"The implications for motivation are vast.  Researches such as Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile have found that external rewards and punishments -both carrots and sticks- can work nicely for algorithmic tasks. But they can be devastatingfor heuristic ones. Those sort of challenges – solving novel problems or creating something the world didn't know it was mising – depends heavily on Harlow's third drive. Anabile calls it the intrinsic motivation principle of creativity, which holds in part: "Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity."  In other words, the central tenents of Motivation 2.0 may actually impair performance of the heuristic, right-brain work on which moder economics depends."

"Partly because work has become more creative and less routine, it has also become more enjoyable. That too scrambles Motivation 2.0 assumptions. This operating system rests on the belief that work is not inherently enjoyable – which is precisely why w must coax people with external rewards and threaten them with outside punishment.  One unexpected finding of the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whom we'll encounter in Chapter 5, is that people are much more likely  to report having "optimal experiences" on the job during leisure.  But if work is inherently enjoyable for more and more people, then the external inducements at the heart of Motivation 2.0 become less necessary.  Worse, as Deci began discovering forty years ago, adding certain kinds of extrinsic rewards on top of inherently interesting tasks can often dampen motivation and diminish performance." Daniel Pink.

What I am learning is that the old modality for controlling folks will not work with the new 'work' model which is actually doing what you love to do. 

I also like that 70% of the new jobs in the US, are coming from Right Brain types.