Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation BY EDWARD L. DECI WITH RICHARD FLASTE

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility BY JAMES P. CARSE

“The goals of management are usually described in words like ‘efficiency,’ ‘advantage,’ ‘value,’ ‘superiority,’ ‘focus,’ and ‘differentiation.’ Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts.” Business leaders, he says, “must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as hon

have realized that creating flow-friendly environments that help people move toward mastery can increase productivity and satisfaction at work.4

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace BY RICARDO SEMLER

“If your 20 percent idea is a new product, it’s usually pretty easy to just find a few like-minded people and start coding away.”

First, they provide employees with what I call “Goldilocks tasks”—challenges that are not too hot and not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly simple.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes BY ALFIE KOHN

How much autonomy do the people in your organization really have? If you’re like most folks, you probably don’t have a clue. Nobody does. But there’s a way to find out—with an autonomy audit. Ask everyone in your department or on your team to respond to these four questions with a numerical ranking (using a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning “almost

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.