Mavenlink Blog Posts

This lecture by Daniel Pink and associated video illustration is just awesome. It provides a compelling argument that, for non-menial work...for work that actually requires cognitive and creative thought, money is not the principal motivator, nor is it even an effective motivator.

As discussed, people are motivated by 3 major things:

Autonomy: The desire to be self-directed. As Daniel says, "let me get out of your way!" is often a big motivator.

Mastery: The urge to get better at stuff. It's satisfying to get better at things we do, right? Why else would we choose to use our weekends playing instruments, doing hobbies, etc...?

Performance: If we allow Autonomy and Mastery, we allow people to perform at their best. Nobody wants to be ridden like a horse.

Mavenlink's organization looks a lot like this - we don't have time to second-guess every decision, nor do we want to. There are times when we all need to agree on things, but by and large, we do what we need to individually to provide our users the best experience.

This is also reflected in how we're building the platform. Open. Collaborative. Simple.

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After watching this video, how can you better motivate yourself, your employees, your subcontractors? How can we better enable you to do that through our technology? We'd love to hear.