Just Rewards

I saw an interesting quote on Alexander Kjerul’s great blog: Chief Happiness Officer…

“One of the most thoroughly replicated findings in the field of social psychology states, the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.” - Alfie Kohn

An animal trainer friend told me that when she works with dogs that annoy their owners with random barking, she trains those dogs to bark on cue (using  rewards)… and then never gives the cue to bark.

Pow!… No more barking!…. think about that for a moment.

What does that say about incentivisation of the work environment. Let’s say that you have a new knowledge management system that you want your department to use. You decide to incentivise its use with some great rewards, and for a time it works really well! Congratulations! Now… what happens when you stop the initial reward scheme?

No more barking ;o)

— Jason Bates

Tags: Kjerul, Happiness, training, motivation, incentivise