Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Daniel H Pink

My First impression based on the title and the subtitle was that this was just another self help pump up book, I couldn't have been more wrong. This book offers an unconventional view on what drives us humans and argues vehemently about why traditional carrot and stick methods of motivation don't work, or rather why they don't work in today's knowledge economy.

Daniel Pink argues that we humans are driven more by the innate need to do meaningful and creative work rather than just the general drudgery of monotonous work that we tend to in the factories of the 20th century.

The book quotes a lot of very popular economic studies and borrows a lot from other books like Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, by Levitt and Dubner, Good to Great by Jim Collins and others. To his credit Pink comes across as very honest and straight forward, giving credit where it is due and clearly outlining any disclosures.

The book professes what enlightened leaders know and have been teaching for ages, Money and material rewards can drive people only so far, beyond a certain threshold the effect of throwing more additional money doesn't generate any more motivation, very much like the principle of marginal utility. Offering people the freedom and flexibility in timings and methods of work is worth more than just giving more money. The feeling of being part of something worthwhile will often dissuade us from jumping ship even when we might be worse off financially.

In fact offering money can in many cases be a negative like was observed in an experiment where potential blood donors were offered cash rewards for donation, and the actual percentage of donors who ended up donating was found to be lowered because the act of getting money somehow took away the altruistic feelings of a noble act like blood donation.

The best part was towards the end where the author has recommendations for businessmen (Books of further reading, policies to try out and implement, etc). Recommendations for individuals and parents bringing up children (Various schools and websites offering an enlightened educations based on the needs of the children)

All up I would whole heartedly recommend this book to everyone and anyone, especially parents , teachers and anyone who has an interest in leading people.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Ron Chernow

To put it simply John D Rockefeller was till date the single richest man in history ever, well now that requires a second mention THE RICHEST MAN EVER even when you compare the Pharaohs of Egypt, Bill Gates, or any of the Ancient Emperors. He was the first man to amass a fortune of close to a Billion dollars and that is in 1900 currency. To give you another comparison, John.D was earning more than a million dollars a month when the average American income was 19$ a week, and that is before the days of income tax.


So it is not surprising that his biography would be a best seller. The book paints a picture of a man of contrasts that was John D, His aggressive and ruthless monopolistic business attitude against his kind and generous that forever changed the face of old money.

Ron Chernow traces John.D's start as a humble no name who never went to college and started trading in commodities, moved on to trading higher commodities petroleum and in Thirty years through brute force and gentle diplomacy built Standard Oil Corporation to one of the biggest monopolies in the world. Not very different from the Monopoly Bill Gates has over the Home Pc Market.

The book is not condescending of the man who is loved and hated at the same time by such large numbers of people. It brings into light some of the shadowy deals, and methods of work which made Standard Oil to the world's biggest monopoly. It doesn't give an aspiring reader like me a detailed insight into John.D's methods of treating people but the book has a few examples nevertheless.

Here is the Wikipedia page on the John D. Rockefeller, Sr which also makes interesting reading.