Book Review: Punished By Rewards

I’ve just finished reading Punished By Rewards. The extended title, The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, pretty much describes the stance Alfie Kohn takes in regard to carrots and sticks, bonuses and MBOs, and the like.

Not only are incentive systems and pay-for-performance plans are pervasive in U.S. companies, but there exists a deep and rarely questioned commitment to belief that offering people rewards will cause them to do a better job. The evidence, however, suggests that extrinsic motivators [bonuses, awards, A’s, trips to warmer lands, etc] in the workplace are not only ineffective but often positively counterproductive. The most familiar reasons proposed to explain this failure deal with relatively minor issues that apply only to specific incentive programs. But several other reasons strike at the heart of the assumptions about motivation that underlie all such programs. The bottom line is that any approach that offers a reward for better performance is destined to be ineffective.

I imagine lots of people would disregard this book simply because it goes agains “conventional wisdom” that throwing money at people makes them happier, more productive, loyal and motivated. The author argues that rewards are bribes meant to manipulate people into getting them to behave in “expected” ways.

Strictly speaking, […] the answer to the question managers often ask of behavioral scientists—’How do you motivate people?’—is, ’You don’t.’

Of course, it is possible to get people to do something. That is what rewards, punishments, and other instruments of control are all about. But the desire to do something, much less to do it well, simply cannot be imposed; in this case, it is a mistake to talk about motivating other people. All we can do is set up certain conditions that will maximize the probability of their developing an interest in what they are doing and remove the conditions that function as constraints.

The book is somewhat dry at first. I felt like I was back in college learning course-specific jargon. Stay the course, though—eventually it gets better and turns into a really fun read.

In my opinion, this book will be very interesting to parents. It should be of great value to people in management positions and those on the receiving end of the paycheck. There is a lot more to the book than the two quotes above, so I encourage you to explore this phenomenal work.

The underlying problem in Western work today really is one of motivation and pay. Managers don't know how to determine what is fair pay for anyone, even though there exists a large body of research that says that pay that is felt to be fair is actually fairly straight-forward to come to.

Unfortunately, it would entail paying a goodly number of IT professionals a great deal more. Mostly thinking of designers and architects at large corporations, not managers.

Pay for Performance does work: except that no one understands what "performance" means because they act like no one knows has any idea of how to measure work. Giving out bonuses to motivate really does work against you: I will start to work for only what I get paid for in the bonuses, even if it is unethical or bad for the company.

When you know what the job actually entails (including the level of work) you actually do pay for performance. But you pay for the performance that you are hiring them to do: I pay for the work that you are going to do rather than paying for the work that you did. I look forward to you doing the level of work (performance) that I hired you to do so I pay you for that expecting it. This is absolutely different than paying you because you did work (pay after the fact). True pay for performance is forward looking and based in trust.

A lot of this also explains why you think that staying somewhere two years is about right.

I guess I don't need to get started on how low level work most IT managers are capable of doing and how so many IT workers are poorly managed because they are managed at the wrong level.

What is your take on .NET alternatives to ASP.NET?
For example the Castle Project. ASP.NET has always left me wanting more. Don't get me wrong, I love the .NET BCL and wouldn't trade C# for any other language, but my recent exploration of Ruby on Rails has left me looking for alternatives.

Eric, I'm not sure how this is related to punishment by rewards but... I haven't actively looked for alternatives to ASP.NET. I've skimmed through the Ruby on Rails book and was quite impressed. I like its power in simplicity. My only problem is learning such an obscure language as Ruby.