Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

Now it's easy for someone to set up a storefront and reach the entire world in very modest ways. So these technologies that we thought would dis-intermediate traditional sellers gave more people the tools to be sellers. It also changed the balance of power between sellers and buyers.

I think there are moral obligations, and I think there are economic transactions. So I think that chores are good; I think that allowances are good. I think combining them is bad.

It's a world where anyone you're selling to probably has just as much information as you, has lots of choices, and all kinds of ways to talk back. And so, the low road is less and less of an option. You actually have to take the high road: Be more honest, more direct, more transparent.

What's important now are the characteristics of the brain's right hemisphere: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. These skills have become first among equals in a whole range of business fields.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.

In order to raise money from somebody, you have to understand who is this person, not to deceive them but to understand them. What would be their motives for contributing money? Why do these people contribute money to some places, but not to others? That's attunement - treating everybody well, but not treating everybody the same.

Management did not emanate from nature. Management is not a tree: it's a television set. Somebody invented it. It doesn't mean it's going to work forever. Management is great. Traditional notions of management are great if you want compliance. But if you want engagement, self-direction works better.

Education in general, and higher education in particular, is on the brink of a huge disruption. Two big questions, which were once so well-settled that we ceased asking them, are now up for grabs. What should young people be learning? And what sorts of credentials indicate they're ready for the workforce?

I think the more important task for a young person than developing a personal brand is figuring out what she's great at, what she loves to do, and how she can use that to leave an imprint in the world. Those are tough questions, but essential ones. Answer those - and the personal brand follows.

I'm not a Trump fan, to put it mildly, but I think there's a power to simplicity. When Trump was running, people knew exactly what he stood for and what he was going to do as President.

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.

My generation's parents told their children, 'Become an accountant, a lawyer, or an engineer; that will give you a solid foothold in the middle class.' But these jobs are now being sent overseas. So in order to make it today, you have to do work that's hard to outsource, hard to automate.

We have this idea that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance - that is, how many times the cash register actually rings - the correlation's almost zero.

If you look at the very best presidents, the most effective presidents, they were always decent salespeople. Ronald Reagan was an extremely effective salesman, very tuned to the people he was selling to, very clear in what he was selling, very resilient and buoyant.

What entrepreneurs and artists have in common is that they give the world something it didn't know it was missing.

Traditional performance reviews have passed their sell-by date. Big time. There's research showing that roughly two-thirds of performance appraisals have either no effect - or a negative effect! - on employee performance.

Entrepreneurs are moving from a world of problem-solving to a world of problem-finding. The very best ones are able to uncover problems people didn't realize that they had.

The billable hours is a classic case of restricted autonomy. I mean, you're working on - I mean, sometimes on these six-minute increments. So you're not focused on doing a good job. You're focused on hitting your numbers. It's one reason why lawyers typically are so unhappy. And I want a world of happy lawyers.

Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don't you think you should be pitching more with questions?

To some extent, the act of creation and the act of selling are hard to disentangle. If you create something, whether it's a painting or a company, I think if you care about it, you have some obligation to go out and tell people about it.

In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.

The misuse of extrinsic rewards, so common in business, impedes creativity, stifles personal satisfaction and turns play into work.

If you understand the independent worker, the self-employed professional, the freelancer, the e-lancer, the temp, you understand how work and business in the U.S. operate today.