Drive: reading list

At the end of Drive, Dan Pink offers a dozen or so books that provide more depth.  All of them intrigued, but these stood out:

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci.
"The questions so many people ask -- namely, 'How do I motivate people to learn?  to work?  to do their chores?  or to take their medicine?' -- are the wrong questions.  They are wrong because they imply that motivation is something that gets done to people, rather than something that people do." 

Fascinating.  Those are questions I'm asking all the time, so I've got the wrong ones.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn.
"Do rewards motivate people?  Absolutely.  They motivate people to get rewards."

I've been thinking about whether to given a small token at every practice for the hardest working player on the soccer team I'm coaching -- basically, a gold star.  Yes, very Management 2.0, but I figure these are 8 year-olds.  Maybe I should read this book first.  Kohn has been writing about this stuff from all sorts of angles; lots to explore.

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace by Ricardo Semler.  Pink calls Semler "the first autonomy freak."  He has 3000 workers in a manufacturing company, Semco -- the kind of company where you'd think stricter management would produce the best results -- and he lets them set their own hours, vote on major decisions.  Some set their own salaries.  Semler hesitates to call his company "organized" -- 3000 people! 

The company has done fantastically well for 20 years.