Drive and Harvard Business School

I am killing 2 birds here – writing this latest instalment and watching the final episode of Dexter Series 2. I know, I know, I am soooo far behind with this, but I am catching up. The man is messed up but needs to stay away form this Lila chick she is the she-devil!

So, just finished reading “Drive” by Daniel Pink. This book has taken me about 6 months to get around to reading, I always found more interesting books to read and was a little scared about getting into “Self-Help” mumbo-jumbo. But glad I did eventually get around to it.

The analogy used throughout, is that as we have evolved over the past 100 years as a society, our operating system has been updated. We started out with Motivation 1.0, which with the technological age upgraded to 2.0 and now “we” are in a society based on creativity, creative thinking and resourcefulness, we upgraded to 3.0.

It’s a nice way to look at things and with the fear of over complicating I will let you read the rest if you want to delve further.

Further to a post recently about how the heck we are doing to deal with Generation Z athletes and coaches, I think I have stumbled across some possibilities. Again, I will let you read to delve deeper, but 3 elements Pink states are essential in our workforce now in order to attain efficiency, creativity and excellence. They are

1.    1.   Autonomy – “need for self direction”

2.    2.   Mastery – “need for engagement rather than compliance”

3.   3.  Purpose –“ it is in our nature to seek purpose and this new world we live in could rejuvenate and remake our world”

I have butchered to great simplicity the synopsis of each point. What was interesting was the idea of seeking out mastery of skills and to realise Flow as the basis for mastery. As coaches we are looking to enable mastery and most of what is talked about can easily be brought into our crazy world of sports performance. Pink also draws on the work Anders Ericcsson and his concept of expert performance in business, sports, and music etc. I am pretty keen on the notion of searching for the uncomfortable and challenging aspects of our world and to try to conquer them.

**Another book I read recently was “What I learnt in Harvard Business School” by Philip Delves Broughton. Quick review = Good book, interesting world, scary these guys run the world, glad I don’t live in that world but seems entertaining!