Daniel Pink lead the second session of Catalyst and he focused on the concept of motivation.  There are a lot of things that can motivate people in life, the most common of which is money.  But there's an important truth that we learn about money:

Once you pay people enough, money stops being a motivator.

Since motivation diminishes when money no longer is a motivating factor, it is important that we realize the ingredients to motivation within our organizations.

1. Autonomy

Management is a technology; it's an old, outdated technology that is no longer the best tool for our organizations.  Management is created to get people to comply and get a task done; it is not something created to encourage creativity.

When we value autonomy in our organizations, we allow people to just try things.  Google's employees use 20% of their time to work on whatever they want.  It is in this freedom that the majority of the great innovations take place and it's essential to the success of their organization.  Imagine if Google never created Gmail.

2. Mastery

Mastery is simply getting better a stuff.  As humans we have the desire to get better at our craft, to improve ourselves.  Unfortunately despite this desire, most organizations do not have a culture of feedback, which is essential to improvement.  Daniel recommended disciplining yourself to review yourself; create goals and review how you are doing.

3. Purpose

Why do you do what you do?  Creativity and innovation will flourish when people believe in what they are doing.  When we take away purpose, people are just working through a list and doing what they were told to do.

Photo Credit: Purplemattfish