ASK THE EXPERT
DANIEL PINK
BY KELLY HEITZ
As one of the best-selling nonfiction authors of the past
decade, DANIEL PINK is one speaker we’re all excited
to see at the 2017 ISPA Conference & Expo. His five
books on work, business, and behavior give incredible
insight into human nature and work culture, and his
passion for his research and subject is sure to have you
on the edge of your seat—just ask one of the 19 million
viewers of his TED Talk on the science of motivation,
which is one of the top ten most
watched of all time!
Win a copy of
Pink’s best-selling
book, To Sell is Human!
Post a photo with
#ISPA2017 on Instagram
before Sept. 1.
For this month’s Ask
the Expert, we dug a
little deeper into how
Pink’s most forward-
thinking ideas have stood
the test of the fast-paced times we
Pulse: In your book A Whole New Mind,
you explain why the future is in the hands of
the right brain, creative thinkers. That book was
published 12 years ago. Do right brain thinkers still hold
the keys to the kingdom?
Pink: Pretty much. In that book, I argued that certain kinds of
skills — linear, SAT, spreadsheet skills — were still necessary
but no longer sufficient. They’ve become easy to outsource to
low-wage countries and easy to automate. As a result, artistic,
empathic, inventive skills were becoming the ones that
mattered most. That’s still true. But what I didn’t expect was
how quickly artificial intelligence was going to progress — self-
driving cars, facial recognition, and beyond. Artificial
intelligence, I think, will begin nibbling away at some right-
brain skills, too. I don’t think that will happen all that much in
the next, say, 10 years. But in the next 20 years, all bets are off.
P: Do you think people have gotten better at using both
sides of the brain as a result of the design-driven, story-
telling world we now live in?
DP: In many ways. Think about design. So many people in so
many professions, now have at least a partial role in, say,
designing a website or a social media profile or presentation. It
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August 2017
now live in and how those ideas
will benefit the leaders in our industry.
doesn’t mean that everyone is great at it, but that’s one skill
that’s seeping into many jobs, even those that are not
nominally “creative.” The same is becoming equally true for
abilities like storytelling, composition, and empathy. They’ve
become a larger component of many jobs.
P: In Drive, you discuss the fact that people aren’t driven
to work harder by monetary rewards, especially when
creativity and decision-making skills are part of the
work. Is this also a result of our shift in society towards
the Conceptual Age?
DP: First, it’s important to understand what the research says.
It doesn’t say that people aren’t motivated by money. Money is
a motivator. It just doesn’t work the way many people expect.
Here’s what the science tells us: There’s a certain kind of
reward that I call an “if-then” reward — as in “If you do this,
then you get that.” If-then rewards are extremely effective for
simple, routine, algorithmic tasks — processing paper, turning
the same screw the same way on an assembly line. These kinds