Author Dan Pink presented insights from his new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, to an audience of entrepreneurs and tech workers at a get-together sponsored by the DC Entrepreneurs Business Networking Group on July 9.

In addition to Johnny Bunko, Dan’s the author of two earlier books, Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind. He’s also been a speechwriter for Al Gore, a contributor to Fast Company, and has had a wide variety of gigs and jobs as a journalist and writer.

Dan started with his own story, which itself illustrates a point he would return to throughout the hour — how persistence can outperform talent in virtually every kind of human endeavor. By his own admission, Dan’s time in law school was not very rewarding, and it was not something he did with any great distinction. But persistence earned him his degree. That could have been the ticket to a lucrative career, but one that could not speak to Dan’s fundamental motivations or his view of himself.

As Dan moved from law to politics to journalism, he relates, the mystery of human motivation, why some people succeed while others do not, became a question, then an obsession, then a theme. He first explored it in the series of interviews that form the backbone of Free Agent Nation.

In Free Agent Nation, Dan interviews and records the experiences of a variety of contract workers across the spectrum of American business. It is a picture of a workplace whose changing demands leverage a new set of skills and qualities in the workforce.

Just what those qualities are becomes the central question of A Whole New Mind, Dan’s next book. In this book, Dan uses the model of left-brain/right-brain thinking to describe the evolution of work; away from linear, analytic, detail-driven processes and toward intuitive, empathic, big-picture interactions with the world. He describes six qualities of mind that will thrive in this kind of workplace, and paints a picture of work where a lot of persistence and a little serendipity combine for great success.

It was that kind of combination, Dan says, that planted the seed for Johnny Bunko. Dan and his family moved to Japan for a year, so that Dan could work on a study of the manga industry. To refer to manga as “Japanese cartoons” doesn’t convey how central the medium is to Japanese culture; as central a form as the movies are to American culture. The opportunity to observe this industry abroad became an opportunity to observe a workplace in profound transition.

Where others might see an opportunity to speculate on future of the global economy, Dan found a very different project: a tale told in manga form that would distill the essential untaught business lessons a free agent like Dan has learned in twenty-five years of work.

What lessons? The kinds of things we have all heard piecemeal in various forms; Johnny gets them all at once though, so they come to him in a very compact form:

1.  There is no plan.
2.  Think strengths, not weaknesses
3.  It’s not about you.
4.  Persistence trumps talent.
5.  Make excellent mistakes.
6.  Leave an imprint.
The experience of writing Johnny Bunko has led Dan further into the mysteries of human motivation, which promises to be the subject of his next book. His ideas on motivation, gleaned from observation of the working world, revolve around the search for fundamental principles, and three motivators that all motivated people want from their work: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

 
Dan Pink (seated) answers questions after his presentation.