· Agile · 3 min read
Driving Motivation - an exercise for understanding the Daniel Pink's Drive model
Daniel Pink Drive model — autonomy, mastery, purpose — applied to agile team motivation. A facilitation exercise for helping teams identify what actually drives their engagement.
Recently, the issue of motivation is permeating my work as an agile consultant. And not surprisingly, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
by Daniel Pink is the main model I’m currently excited about.
Today, while a colleague was describing the Autonomy Mastery Purpose (AMP) model in our Agile Forum meeting, I thought of an exercise that can be used to learn and internalize the model. ( this can be thought of as a pattern of the Force Field Analysis retrospective activity)
The outline of the exercise
- Ask participants to come up with as many management actions they can think of that happen in their organization, they heard of, are considering, etc. Write them on sticky post-its.
- Provide a primer on Drive and the AMP model
- Meanwhile Draw the diagram from the first slide on a whiteboard / flip chart / several flip charts
- Ask the participants to come place their actions in the right place in the diagram – each action can be driving/restraining one of the A M P aspects.
- Ask the participants to look for duplicates and conflicts – actions that they have disagreement/confusion about
- Have a discussion about the items in disagreement
- Ask participants what are the actions they are committing to try in order to help drive higher motivation, and what are the actions they are committing to try to stop. One from each category should be enough per participant.
Some advanced tweaks or ideas that might improve the exercise:
- Use pictograms for the actions
- Use different colors for activities currently being done, and ideas.
- Separate discussion to current activities, and later on after discussing the model, ask participants to come up with ideas that can help drive higher motivation
- Reorder the steps somewhat…
- Provide a set of activities that the participants need to classify, instead of coming up with their own, or on top of it as a bootstrapping activity.
If you try this and find it useful - let me know!
[slideshare id=6938527&doc=drivingmotivationexercise-110215152934-phpapp02]
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does this motivation exercise usually take?
A practical first pass takes about 45-60 minutes for a team workshop. If you want deeper discussion and action planning, allocate 90 minutes.
Can this work with leadership teams and not just delivery teams?
Yes. Leadership behavior strongly shapes autonomy, mastery, and purpose, so running this exercise with managers and executives is often high leverage.
What is the most important output to capture?
Capture concrete start/stop commitments tied to Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. The value comes from behavior changes, not only from the classification discussion.
About Yuval Yeret
Yuval is a rare practitioner who has shaped the agility path of dozens of organizations and influenced the frameworks used across the industry. He helps product and technology leaders move from agile theater to evidence-informed, outcome-oriented delivery that creates better value sooner, safer, and happier.
