Rewarding people for a job ‘well done’ makes them reap rewards. The ‘why’ of what they’re doing’s being relegated to the background.
Rules and incentives tend to make us serve our own interests, not those of what and who they’re working for. They turn us into good doggies: very apt at following the system and its rules, but absolute failures at using practical wisdom.
And they don’t exactly inspire us to be great at what we do.
Below TED-talk made me think of Drive author Dan Pink arguing for purpose, mastery and autonomy in the workplace. A very welcome contribution to thoughts on happiness, Barry Schwartz speaks of love and work as the two most important factors.
The nasty thing with rules and incentives
- Teachers are being motivated to pass as many students as possible, not to create eagerness and to teach them to teach themselves (check out this brilliant and funny TED-talk on child-driven education).
- Doctors get paid for the number of procedures they make, not for putting proper time and attention into people’s wellfare.
- Judges are made to follow strict guidelines, not to make conscious and honest calls of judgment.
They do have a purpose though: demoralizing people’s work, and demoralizing people themselves.
So what we need is freedom to add meaning
Work only makes us happy when it’s meaningful and we have the freedom to engage in it, to be wise and to best serve what we stand for.
Schwartz dons some nice examples of people who change the system by focusing on results instead of rules. Do you have examples yourself? Feel free to comment and inspire!
Picture: gOod dOG by 27147 on Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.