Thursday, February 10, 2011

Are we really just horses?

Fewer feet that own more shoes, but basically horses that our bosses can motivate with a carrot in front of us and a stick at our back?

Daniel Pink tells us that carrots and sticks actually demotivate us! What do you think? And how do we implement his ideas at work?

I remember years ago I wanted to increase the sales of a particular product so I ran a contest -- whatever store sold the most each week got a mention in that week's store bulletin, the store with the most sales over the month got an extra bonus to split among the employees and the manager got a bigger bonus for himself, and after 8 weeks the overall winning store got another bonus. Immediately sales went up. But over the course of the contest I noticed that the winning stores kept winning and the losing stores began to see sales drop off. As if, what's the point -- we're not going to win anyway. What should I have done instead?

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