This is a typical American management-book. It has a message, but it’s too simple and too short to write a whole book about it. Maybe an article would have been more appropriate. So the author writes every little things minimum three times almost by the same words, talks about the past, and mentions far too much irrelevant facts.
OK, it’s just the style, apart from that the message would be great. But no, the message is only a tag, a short word for three well known psychological term: independence, professionalism and purposefulness. If an employee happened to have this three things, he or she would be motivated. Great! But we already knew that! Somehow the book doesn’t explain the most important thing: why exactly this three things helps us to be motivated? Isn’t two of that enough? Or why don’t we need a fourth thing? The book doesn’t come up with a convincing answer. It is just about many serious scientist, who proved the fact, that if an employee were independent, he would be more motivated. Correct, thank you, and we can read again all the ideas about the flow from Csíkszentmihályi, thanks for that, too.
Apart from this, the first part of the book is relatively interesting, it shows us why the old conception of motivation was wrong. We already suspected that, but there were precise results that convinced us, and nevertheless these were very interesting.
And there is a list of many books, schools and webpages at the end of the book about interesting psychological things, that the author found in connection with motivation. For example Waldorf-schools, the Good to be great, Flow, once more there isn’t anything new.
Daniel H. Pink: Drive, 2011