In this video with the word ‘Puzzle’ in its title, the speaker Daniel H. Pink sheds light on the way
of governing businesses; something apparently simple, but equally intriguing
when thought about deeply. He starts his lecture with the humor of a lawyer,
pretending as if he had been presenting a case in front of the juries.
As an act of showing off his skill as a lawyer (no pun
intended), he throws off a puzzle towards the audience. Being called the famous
‘Candle Problem’, created by psychologist karl Duncker, in this experiment the
participant is given a box of thumbtack, a pack of matches along with a candle
and is instructed to attach a lit candle to the wall without dripping wax on
the table. It is in fact a cognitive performance test and is used to measure a
person’s problem solving capabilities. Because everyone possesses some extent
of cognitive bias and thereby not used to using things other than the
conventional way, the problem seems to be a pretty challenging one. In the
lecture Dan reveals the outstanding finding as observed in a series of
experiments that, out of the two different groups, one working for a reward and
the other not, the latter finishes the first every time, even though the latter
is not working for the reward. This astonishing result is beyond anyone’s
common sense to say the least and definitely the least expected possibility.
All around us, we are only accustomed to the policy of incentive but the
science clearly contradicts. Most part of the speech is on why something so
counterintuitive, happens.
But before moving into the reasons, he decides to brush up on
the candle problem again with a view to showing the infallibility of the
theory. So he decides to present a simpler version of the candle problem where
the thumbtacks are kept outside the box. The problem this time is fairly easy because
the solution seems obvious as the box, left without any thumbtack inside this
time, is a definite clue. And it has been found that in such straightforward
problems the group with reward becomes the faster one. The speaker accentuates
that reward as a form of extrinsic motivation is only effective for activities
that require minimal cognitive skills. But as he points out, most of the works
that we deal with in our professional life require great deal of out of the box
thinking and asserts that rewards, instead of being a source of motivation,
acts just the opposite, as a result of which much of the potential productivity
is lost.
Even the assumption that policy of incentive, which the speaker
terms as carrot and stick policy, might work in underdeveloped countries, where
monetary benefits are supposedly much highly appreciated, has also been proved
to be wrong by similar experiments carried on in those countries.
He thereby stresses on the importance of inclusion of the
policy of intrinsic motivation in the work fields. The policy based on the
natural tendency of human beings to govern lives in their own way, desire to
get better at what they aim for and a yearning for serving something larger
than life, if adopted will not only revolutionize the human workforce but will also
act as an impetus for creating a better world, is what the speaker believes.
The vital concept that lies in the heart of this lecture is the
theory of self-determination from psychology. The theory lies on the belief
that it is the innate nature of a human being to seek for his own potential and
be committed to mastering this inner force. He is driven by ‘inherent growth
tendencies’ which acts as a stimulus to motivate him to achieve a goal. Due to
these inherent qualities human being has topped the evolutionary ladder and
flourished in the fields of arts, culture and science, while other animals that
in many cases were blessed with superiority in strength and adaptation, could
not.
But the major factor that plays role behind these inherent
qualities to come into force is external. Social and economic factors play most
of these extrinsic roles. As it has been seen in the lecture, science shows a
clear distinction between the work that comes out of reward with limited
freedom and the work that is the product of self-motivation rather than reward,
the latter being much more efficient.
But anyone does not have to be a scientist to understand the
reason behind ‘success’, which in fact is a feat achieved out of a lot of
productive works connected together. And it is no secret that such a feat is achievable
only by means of passion and love for what someone is doing. On this note, I
will mention about the Wright brothers, credited to be the inventors of plane.
Being two humble bicycle repairmen, they were driven by the passion and grit to
study on their own and create something that no one before them could do, even
though much of the researches had been going on Universities as elite as
Harvard or Cambridge. In fact the world abounds with great people in wide
arrays of fields but all converging at the same point known as passion, grit
and determination.
By Ahmed Mustahid
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