E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

Punished by Rewards is by far the best book on motivation that I have ever read. Never mind that it could be one third the length and still make the same point.  It is still an extremely valuable book because it not only challenges current state of events, but does a great job of it.

The basic argument of the book is that both rewards and punishments are ineffective and counterproductive because they being extrinsic motivators enter in place of intrinsic motivators and by becoming their substitutes eventually displace intrinsic motivation. Thus, he argues they should not be used in education or in management. He then goes on to spend nearly 400 pages to support his argument. There is no shortage of citations of research or examples to make his point.

And yet, I feel that while he is mostly right, that little bit when he is wrong is deadly. There is a place for rewards and punishment. And that place is any time we deal with safety and security of the individual and those around them. Fortunately, it is those times when both punishment and reward, having been properly explained, work wonders.

Punishment or reward is also highly effective in an arm’s length environment of dealing with strangers. It is simply impractical to try to educate a stranger good manners, whereas it is very practical to have guidelines with a carrot/stick to enforce those guidelines.

There is a need for boundaries, there is also a need for measurement and while I agree that the very nature of a measurement creates an additional overhead over the process, thus results have the potential to be better without measurement at all, it is necessary for both internal feedback and external communication of progress. Yes, parents and students should be less concerned about a grade then about learning. Yes, an employee should do a good job just because it is not acceptable to their internal control to do anything less. But there are times, many times when we need to interact with someone who does not know or care about all that, but would rather just know if we can be trusted. It is here that a simple pass, or “receive feedback for future study” testing mechanism is necessary.

So, while a great book and a phenominal argument for “self-directed workgroup” environment, it is unfortunate that it throws out the ”hierarchy” environment completely. Yes, it is way overused. Yes, it is a completely ineffective learning environment. Yet, when there is a fire in the house and we need to get everyone out, it is by far the most efficient organizational structure for getting things done.

Thus a mark of a great organization, or a great person, in my mind, is one who does not work for money, reward or praise, but nevertheless is not ruined by either getting or not getting it. Someone who can focus on the task in spite of the external factors, yet someone who can use the growing influence that is the result of money, rewards and praise to further the task and thus become even more successful.

Having voiced my objections, I still agree with the basic premise of the book for most human interactions (excluding the arm’s length kind, or ones done in an emergency that threatens somebody’s safety or security) the punishment and reward model is less then ideal and counterproductive.  As we move to the knowledge based society out of the environment where we spend most of our time just surviving, these ideas must become a mainstream practice.

Have you read any great books? I’d love to hear from you.

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