I recently finished Daniel Pink’s book called Drive along with a handful of the leadership team at Central. I absolutely loved the counter-intuitive nature of the content and how much it reminded me of a good Malcolm Gladwell book. If you lead anybody, employees or kids or anyone else to who you have influence, this book is a must read. Here are some of the quotes that stood out to me:

“Harlow offered a novel theory–what amounted to a third drive: ‘The performance of the task,’ he said, ‘provided intrinsic reward.’”

“Companies that typically rely on external rewards to manage their employees run some of their most important systems with products created by nonemployees who don’t seem to need such rewards.”

“Partly because work has become more creative and less routine, it has also become more enjoyable. That, too, scrambles Motivation 2.0′s assumptions. This operating system rests on the belief that work is not inherently enjoyable–which is precisely why we must coax people with external rewards and threaten them with outside punishment.”

“Human beings have a innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

“In a ROWE [Results Only Work Environment] workplace, people don’t have schedules. They show up when they want. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time–or any time, for that matter. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, and where they do it is up to them.”

“We forget sometimes that ‘management’ does not emanate from nature. It’s not like a tree or a river. It’s like a television or a bicycle. It’s something that humans invented.”

“The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

I just finished the book Rework, by Jason Fried. It was an extremely easy read, but that’s not to say it has surface level content. It is written in an artistic way, yes even including graphics, but it takes a look at business and challenges some commonly shared beliefs. In that regard, it reminds me of my favorite leadership book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership. Whatever your business is, it could probably be improved by rethinking and reworking some of the ways you do things. If nothing else, it will challenge you to find reasons why you disagree with what they are saying. Here are some of the ideas that stood out to me:

“Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.”

“Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute.”

“When you want something bad enough, you make the time–regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time. Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true.”

“Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”

“It’s better to have people be happy using someone else’s product than disgruntled using yours.”

“How long someone’s been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.”