In his book, author Alfie Kohn, relates an interesting tale of an elderly man who had endured the insults of a crowd of 10-year-olds every day as they passed his house on the way home from school.One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the following day and shouted rude comments about him would receive a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth.
True to his word, the old man ambled out and paid everyone. "Do the same tomorrow," he told them, "and you'll get 25 cents for your trouble." The kids thought that was still pretty good and turned out again on Wednesday to taunt him.At the first catcall, he walked over with a roll of quarters and again paid off his hecklers. "From now on," he announced, "I can give you only a penny for doing this. The kids looked at each other in disbelief. "A penny?" they repeated scornfully, "Forget it." And they never came back again. Clearly, the elderly man had understood the right hot buttons to press to motivate/demotivate the jeering kids.As managers, we too need to understand the needs and expectations of our people, and align them to the performance goals we have set for them. Only then will we be able to design a successful rewards and incentives program.
How good are you at understanding the hot buttons of YOUR people? Take this quiz to find out.
4 comments:
Congrats Uday.. your writings come in like a breath of fresh air when the air around you is getting stale.. more power to you :-)
A good story. This is notivation in reverse gear. Sales Managers need to learn a lesson --- do not start with high incentives; you may find it difficult to sustain them.
Thanks Ankur, hope to increase my carbon ratings in the future :)
Unfortunately most incentives centre only around money and even worse - are not connected to intelligently formulated performance goals.As Alfie Kohn puts it, our theory of motivation is derived from laboratory animals, and until we question this theory, our work places will continue to decline.
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