Fancy a dose of original thinking to spice up your management-training seminars? You could do a lot worse than open your eyes and ears to this presentation from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) – a group that blends funding with provocative debate to drive progress on social issues.

In this mesmerising, hand-drawn animation – which is actually being hand drawn while you’re watching it – bestselling author and motivation specialist Dan Pink waxes lyrical on recent breakthrough research on what spurs people to peak performance in the workplace. The ideas Pink espouses have even caught the attention of Richard Branson, who devoted a tweet and blog to the video.

Some management theorists could well find the results of the research alarming, because they are counterintuitive and challenge some of the more deeply held, nay traditional, concepts that have built up around motivation. But the key findings are essentially that rewards such as bonuses, pay rises and other endorsements are only really useful for some of the less complex functions of an employee’s role. As soon as rewards are boosted in order to honour performance on more difficult or logistically challenging tasks, performance itself is undermined.

The research, initially conducted by the US Federal Reserve Bank, was met with disbelief by its backers, but proved to hold true when transferred to less affluent circumstances in India.

Structured around one of Pink’s speeches, RSA’s presentation is lively and full of verve for the intricacies of its theme – so it’s probably time I got out of your way and let you watch it!