crystallize!

Everyone knows that offering incentives to employees yields better results, the same way we know that dangling a carrot in front of a horse will motivate him to walk toward it. The only problem is, it turns out that we’re wrong.

In a recent TED Talk, Dan Pink explains the mismatch between how the business world handles motivation, and what science shows about what really works instead. Carrots worked well for 20th century tasks involving mechanical manipulation, but once you shift over into 21st century tasks that are more about cognition, introducing an extrinsic motivator not only doesn’t help results, it harms them.

Fortunately, science also knows what does work instead: intrinsic motivators. You’ve seen the famous cases like Wikipedia and google labs. Watch this TED Talk for more insight into the way you think about rewards.

Learned from a recent NYT article about this interesting new start-up in Brooklyn. Kickstarter calls itself “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers…,” and is quick to say that it’s not about lending or charity. Instead, it says it provides “a sustainable marketplace where people exchange goods for services or some other benefit and receive some value.”

Which reminds that I’ve been wanting to post also about Kiva, which has had an enormous impact in its several years of “loans that change lives.” Entrepreneurs from all over the world (Lebanon, Nicaragua, Uganda) submit their project proposals and photos, along with how much money they need to raise ($230, $375, $1200). For just $25 (or more), you select an entrepreneur whose project and profile appeal to you. Kiva takes care of updating you on the project’s progress, and maintaining public records about how much of the loan has been repaid. When your money is repaid (current repayment rate is over 98% — see lots of interesting stats), you can withdraw it or reinvest in another project.

Sure, we talk about eco footprints, but how easily can you visualize how much of an impact you’re having on the planet? This thought-provoking interactive calculator may offer you surprising results. It asks, How many Planet Earths would we need if everyone lived like you? Then it lets you try fiddling with your various answers to create scenarios that would lessen your impact.

This interesting new program launched today: the Obama administration is calling for widespread volunteerism from “all Americans.” They’ve cooked up a new open-source app (called All for Good) that makes it easy not only for existing non-profit organizations to solicit help, but for anyone at all to announce a new project and drum up helpers. Projects are tagged, and thus searchable, by topic keywords and locations, and by date if applicable. It’s useful and nicely built — by volunteers, of course, from places like Google, Craigslist, and UCLA.

It will be interesting to see how this plays. Are people who don’t volunteer their time really just waiting for an invitation? From the level of vitriol in the comments on the YouTube video (if you view it there instead of embedded on the official site), it seems there are other loud voices as well: “Volunteerism is slavery,” “I serve by paying taxes,” and a great many inarticulate remarks too rude to repeat, signed with usernames like “fartingpenguin.” So certainly we will fall short of participation by “all Americans.” On the other hand, the folks who do volunteer will find this tool useful, and they’re certain to gain some new recruits.

Layers of clarity:

“when i am confused, i look out & think the issue is money. when i take a breath and look in, it is always about time.”
—my friend Judith, on Facebook

“When I look at time and money, it’s often about breath.”
—her friend Gene

Both of these feel true to me. Though I am wanting to place “attention” in this equation as well. The concept popularly known as “time management” really turns out, for many people, to be framed more usefully as “attention management” — not the juggling of tasks into time periods, but the focusing on what’s most important. Breathing is a good start, and often helps you see where to focus next.

Breathe. What’s next?

When I was in library school, we had a dean who could be counted on to draw at least one Venn diagram on the whiteboard any time he addressed an audience. It made for a great running joke, as the rest of us found excuses to join him in diagramming just about any subject matter into the same neat format. Perhaps that accounts for some of my fondness for the medium.

Today’s favorite new diagram: How to be happy in business, from whatconsumesme.com. (He’s now offering high-res poster-sized copies of this image.) A nice visual reminder of what to hold in focus, especially if you need to keep monetizing in the mix.

If you prefer your elegant diagrams with more twist of the unexpected, perhaps you’ll also enjoy one of my favorite daily blogs, Indexed, whose creator Jessica Hagy has been turning out witty graphs for nearly three years now. She juxtaposes things you probably hadn’t thought of in the same sentence before.