I have seen incentives mostly play at an executive level; e.g. purchasing incentivised to deliver cost down improvements; marketing to introduce new products & features, service to improve uptime etc.
None of these incentives would be aligned and based on their siloed objectives they all would 'fight' for R&D resources.
Sort of John's point IMV. You are absolutely right that nobody really designs incentives at a system level and ironically no department head is really incentivised to. So I think the line about considering both incentives and what's getting in their way (other people's incentives) should show the way forward - execs need to collaborate too. And everyone at that level needs to think about org design. It's tough, and tricky but I believe that's what they get paid for
Isn't doing meaningful work an incentive by itself? Like you said, leaders just need to make sure that people have the opportunity to make meaningful contribution and their efforts lead to good things for the company and for their personal career growth. It's amazing how hard some leaders make it for others to do this.
We are disincentive ourselves in any system that exploits but where that exploitation is not always apparent and where the toxic impacts of that system do not appear until later. See climate catastrophe as one such example and the models of behaviour that result in damage every single second.
The whippings will continue until motivation improves.
+1, generally better to start with ability factors first before motivation factors.
I have seen incentives mostly play at an executive level; e.g. purchasing incentivised to deliver cost down improvements; marketing to introduce new products & features, service to improve uptime etc.
None of these incentives would be aligned and based on their siloed objectives they all would 'fight' for R&D resources.
Sort of John's point IMV. You are absolutely right that nobody really designs incentives at a system level and ironically no department head is really incentivised to. So I think the line about considering both incentives and what's getting in their way (other people's incentives) should show the way forward - execs need to collaborate too. And everyone at that level needs to think about org design. It's tough, and tricky but I believe that's what they get paid for
Isn't doing meaningful work an incentive by itself? Like you said, leaders just need to make sure that people have the opportunity to make meaningful contribution and their efforts lead to good things for the company and for their personal career growth. It's amazing how hard some leaders make it for others to do this.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Reminds me of Daniel Pink & Drive - go for the TED talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation
We are disincentive ourselves in any system that exploits but where that exploitation is not always apparent and where the toxic impacts of that system do not appear until later. See climate catastrophe as one such example and the models of behaviour that result in damage every single second.