Motivation and Rewards: What Research Actually Shows

In our time of "open spaces" and "brain storming", many bosses think that whip and gingerbread are the only correct and possible means of managing employees. If they raise wages or raise bonuses, employees will immediately give them brilliant ideas and increase their productivity. And if you yell at a person or deprive him of part of his money, he will become even more effective.

Many believe that since the whip and gingerbread worked 50 or even 150 years ago, they will still work today. But it is not so. 50 years ago, subordinates needed monotonous automatic actions, the market needed "robots". Therefore, the relationship "I give you money - you give me work" worked. Now no one wants "robots", everyone wants thinking, creative, ideational, initiative people in the team. Requirements have changed, and interaction with employees has remained only at the level of "robots".

New ideas are the most important and valuable thing you can get from people. No one will invent Google or the iPhone for a premium or the threat of fines.

Have you ever wondered who creates open and free resources? For example, who are these people who add to Wikipedia? People who spend their personal time writing the largest encyclopedia in the world are not getting paid for it, and no one is forcing them to do it. Why do they do this? Or why people translate all the languages ​​of the world for free and at one time the videos we watch on Youtube or TED Talk.

This does not mean that people are willing to work for free, but motivating or manipulating people with money is not effective. You need to pay people so much that they don't think about money, only then will they start thinking about work.

If so, who do you think would replace Einstein, Pushkin, Ford or Steve Jobs? Intellectual property is more valuable than material things. What one person can think of, another person may not. Time and people are the company's most valuable resources.

You are not buying a washing machine that has washed things as a result of its operation. You acquire minds and ideas that always depend on personality, education, character composition, past experience, all these things are individual and unique.

The desire for superiority only works if a person is engaged in an activity that requires physical action, such as sports, rather than the brain. If you hold a competition to create something new, then the participants' part of the brain will be busy processing the idea that "my invention must be better than others", instead of fully concentrating on the work. Therefore, when competitions with monetary prizes are held for the development of new ideas, new ideas are born extremely rarely.

Total control, monitoring of work, reports on work, reports on reports will not increase the productivity of people rather the opposite. Create conditions under which people will be interested in doing what they love. I wonder who ever considered how much time people spend writing reports on their work instead of doing their work?

In our technological age, people value meaning, creativity, new interesting tasks and pride in their work much more. That's why there's a queue of thousands of people wanting to work for companies like Google, and that's why companies like Google thrive and surprise us with innovation.

Popular retellings of “MIT research” claim that larger rewards impair complex work. Findings depend on the task, design, stakes, culture, and whether a reward feels informational, fairly compensating, or controlling.

Pay, deadlines, evaluation, and rules organize behavior. Problems arise when they become the only source of movement, reduce autonomy, or encourage hiding mistakes. Fair compensation does not inherently oppose intrinsic interest.

Complex activity is easier to sustain with a clear purpose, workable choice, visible progress, and useful feedback. This does not remove the need for resources, pay, and realistic workload.

CBT SHIFT distinguishes actual demands, automatic predictions, and available choice.