Daniel Pink on Incentives and the Two Types of Motivation

‘If, then’ rewards or conditional rewards are when we promise to give something to an individual when they complete a certain task.

These rewards can have a negative impact on motivation as the employees lose the will to work on that task for the sake of working.

There are many examples of scandals, and scams, like managers tweaking their reports to show better results, or athletes using steroids. These shortcuts do not work in the long run. If we are having a spark of intrinsic motivation, the reward is the work itself, and there can be no shortcuts if we love our work.

The drive towards your goal can convince you to make certain decisions or do objectionable and undesirable things that you normally will not do.

Rewards work for routine tasks that require no creativity. If we put incentives on creativity, the drive to create can disappear once the incentives or rewards are removed.