Do rewards build effective teams?
A QUESTION, a hot debate and a never-ending table talk... Do incentives really motivate people? Do they actually help us build teams? How about building effective teams?
If you want to build a committed, collaborative and cohesive teams, you have to pay them for excellence, for achievement and condour, right? Agreement all round?
Have we ever asked ourselves, why would I accept a reward or an incentive? Most of the time the answer is because a peer from your team got it. Isn't it? It is indeed different to overstate the extent to which most managers and corporations believe in the redemptive power of rewards.
Certainly, the vast majority of companies across the world use some initiative or the other to tie compensation to one of the drivers of performance.
More importantly, the rarely examined belief is that people will do a better job if they are promised some kind of an incentive.
Do rewards really work? The only thing that these rewards or incentives can provide are `temporary compliance' and not permanent or fulfilling solution.
But when it comes to producing and productising long lasting change in attitudes and behaviour, rewards, just like punishments, are strikingly ineffective. They can only provide a temporary change.
When W. Edwards Deming declared `Pay is not a motivation'. It came as a shock to many and sounds absurd to most of us. One would agree that money buys most of what people need and want.
And if any of us when asked to guess what matters most to others - we would say `money' of course. But put the question directly, `What do you care about' - pay is either fifth or sixth in the list.
Even if people were concerned, in principle, with their salaries, this does not mean that paying people more would encourage them to perform.
For example, let's assume that someone's take home was cut by half starting this month, would this cut his performance exactly in to two? On the contrary, if someones's take home were doubled starting this month: would it increase his or her performance two fold?
So the question, Do incentives motivate people? Yes, they motivate them to get more rewards.
Rewards and punishments are like two sides of the same coin. They have a temporary effect, both on performance and correction and never can they have a permanent effect. Moment after moment, people take actions that prove immediate rewards, and take actions that they think will lead to future rewards. Do such rewards build effective teams? Or is there more to it?
The buck finally stops at you... what would I look for in any organisation? Is it word class processes? Is it high performance culture? Is it strategic clairty? Or is it just a 'pay" packet?
There is a choice for you.
HARI CHEREDDI
faqs@cnkonline.com
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