Daniel Pink, author of five books about changing the world of work, recently offered attendees at the 28th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference insights on what science tells us about what motivates people on the job, and an alternate approach to the way most organizations view motivation.

“There’s a rich trove of research about what motivates people to do great things, what motivates people to do breakthrough kinds of work,” he said. “I think what you’ll find are some synergies between this different, alternate approach to motivation and many things that the Baldrige Program figured out a couple of decades ago.”

Pink said most people have an assumption about motivation: that rewarding behavior will get more of that behavior and punishing behavior will get less. However, science has shown that this is the result as long as the task uses mechanical skills, is simple and short term, and follows an algorithm or recipe.

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