Leadership of Motivation

The Ethics and Practicality of Incentives

Photo by Rosie Fraser on Unsplash

Probably one of the most erroneous notions sold to business leadership today is the idea that incentives are the best medicine for improving low productivity and bottom line return. Incentives are those experiences we have that generate in us the fear of punishment or the expectation of reward, thereby inciting us to action or effort. For the last forty years increasingly, refinements and enhancements have been made to incentive programs with the belief that incentives are the foundation of motivation. In fact it is so prevalent that incentives have become the cornerstone of a culture themselves, an incentive culture so to speak.

The Global Dream: A Systematic Erosion

Many businesses today are seeking to move toward becoming self reliant organizations where individuals and teams can be counted upon to use their own judgment. What is “right” for the whole of the business is to be the guide for behavior of employees. “Full business partners” implies a workforce that is continuously learning, developing, and taking on bigger and riskier challenges in service of the business. Companies which have workforces which routinely behave this way are unbeatable from a competitive standpoint. Business leadership wants the workforce, in short, to have the same level of…