How can money reward poor performance? - Image ID: 23154567

The standard belief in most organisations is money incentives spur greater performance. Reward the behaviour you want and get more of that behaviour. B. F. Skinner showed how this worked a treat for pigeons, see below…. but what about those of us without the awkward pigeon walk? What if we have no beak or wings? Will this work for humans?

Apparently we’re not as much like pigeons as some have us believe and it’s been said the makers of the cartoon “The Simpsons” created the character “Principal Skinner” after B.F. The below clip might give us some insight on that one..

The Simpsons - image id: 24643221

The claim here is once a job requires more than just mechanical skills, monetary incentives / bonuses etc. don’t work. Strangely still, the larger the reward the poorer performance. It goes against logic and that’s a very human thing to do - so no surprises there.

Some might not see the merit of employees doing more than just manual-based repetitive tasks, but if your company requires real innovation (and most would in such a dynamic market) then it appears monetary incentives are not the way to go. If a person is paid enough “to take issue of money off the table”, what then can a company or a manager do to motivate staff?

According to the claim, when we want better performance, we need to give staff:

• Autonomy - a level of self-direction (apologies to the micro-manager)
• Mastery - helping people become the best in their craft (so they feel like they are making a real contribution)
• Purpose - an overriding purpose for the greater good (just amassing a lot money, probably doesn’t fit here)

The idea of purpose is an interesting one. A post by Techguerilla talks about that using a slightly different term but one that’s perhaps more apt: “Intent”:

Intent is essentially the combination of transparency with authenticity. Put simply, if your companies belief system is based on the premise that the greater the value you provide to your customers the more successful you will be then you have nothing to worry about, because the focus of your efforts across the organization should be in alignment with that belief. If on the other hand it is based on the premise that margins trump all, then I’d highly recommend treading carefully in the social media spectrum as it excels in exposing your true intent.

If that doesn’t help us to rethink the way things are usually done, here’s a great video about motivating pigeons:

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