Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Picked this book up some time ago, perhaps after seeing Daniel Pink give this presentation of the importance of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Read it back then, and have re-read recently as I’ve been casting my mind forward to the next recruitment initiatives.

The Book	What we thought
“Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel Pink	Well worth it for us

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The content of this book is very much along the lines of the talk at TED – which  means that, if you are not aligned with the belief that Intrinsic Motivation is more important than Extrinsic Motivation (after watching the lecture), then the book will probably do nothing further for you.

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A whirlwind trip interstate this week to see some existing clients, and some potential new clients, provided a few hours on the plane to catch up on some reading.

Amongst the things I read was “What brain science tells us about how to excel” by Edward M Hallowell in the December 2010 issue of HBR.

Given we have set some ambitious goals in terms of where our bus is headed, and that I have learnt (the hard way) the value of getting the right people on the bus, and in the right seats, I read this article with great interest.

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An article “How to make the rats run harder” in the AFR recently pointed me in this direction, which is great.  The article was written to promote a book “A whole new mind”, and references another, “Predictable Irrational” by Dan Ariely.  We have dutifully added both to our Amazon cart and will review in due course.

The article, and associated materials, is very relevant to discussions that are ongoing within our company about how to meet the challenges of the next 10 years.

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The basic premise:

As is noted ad-nauseum these days – the lower paid, unskilled or semi-skilled work is being outsourced to other countries, or automated.

For people in OECD countries like Australia, that leaves everyone who remains chasing a growing number of jobs in the “knowledge economy” [replace with your favourite buzz-word here].

To motivate such people (where creativity is a core part of the job), a fundamentally different system of incentivisation and motivation is required, compared to the previous (Taylorist) world in which a crude combination of carrots and sticks was good enough to achieve an outcome.

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