Category Motivation

The Questions I Get Most Often About How to Design an Incentive Program

Never Cross the Social and Market Norms Streams

One of my favorite books on influence is “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. It’s a mash up of “Freakonmics” and “Influence: Science and Practice” and “Fooled by Randomness.” I reference the book regularly and have my e-notes in a special file… Continue Reading →

One Question to Ask if You Want to Increase Performance

Incentive programs reward people for hitting specific goals.  Typically, you announce the requirements and as your audience performs and hit the specified hurdles, they earn awards – points, credits, what have you. The points earned can be redeemed for merchandise,… Continue Reading →

Incentive Award Choices – Focus on “We” Awards

What I thought about this weekend is that most companies would love to have all their employees (or their distribution channel and customers for that matter) focused on the best interests of the company.  However, that is a difficult task. … Continue Reading →

Channel Loyalty – Is It Possible Today?

The short answer is yes. But this would rank right up there as one of my top 10 boring-est blog posts if that was the only answer I gave. If you rely on independent channels to distribute and sell your… Continue Reading →

Motivation in Today’s World – Or is it Yesterdays?

Read to the end – surprise awaits! Maximize Overlapping Desires… I realize the changes in the employment picture are challenging. Mostly because today employees (or channel partners and consumers for that matter) look at the world differently. They don’t follow… Continue Reading →

Why You Shouldn’t “HOP” to Awards First to Influence Behavior

Read to the end – video embedded! Over my thankfully too many years in the influence, incentive and reward industry I have seen one axiomatic behavior by clients and amateur/poser solution architects when it comes to designing programs to influence… Continue Reading →

Why Maslow Needs to Retire

A while back (like in 2009) I wrote what follows. This is edited a bit but by and large it is the same post (google seo be damned!) Back then I ran a decidedly unscientific poll asking if Maslow’s Hierarchy… Continue Reading →

Garbage In Garbage Out – Designing Incentives Isn’t Easy

Too often I see incentive programs that cause more problems than they solve. For some reason people think it’s easy designing programs because they remember giving their kids potty-training stickers and they use that as their “expert” program design experience…. Continue Reading →

4th in a 5-Part Series – Control is Critical

Been awhile since I posted the 3rd installment in this series – “Design for the Many – Not the One”. But, alas, I did not forget you, gentle reader. I’ve just been busy. Crazy busy. I’m convinced that activity on… Continue Reading →

Words With Friends – Words With Emotion

Incentives and rewards influence behavior. Recognition influences behavior. Simply paying attention influences behavior (ask Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger after their studies at the Hawthorne plant in the 1920s). What you say influences behavior. HOW you say things also has… Continue Reading →

Put an ACE up your sleeve when designing incentive programs…

There are a million things to consider when designing an effective incentive program. But at a very high level you want to do three things… Get your audience to accept and commit to the program. Find a way to have… Continue Reading →

2017 Resolutions – Top 10 “Won’t Post” Topics for 2017

  Note: I just noticed that I published a “10 Posts Not to Write About HR” back in September. So this is a bit of rehash. It has more in it and I’ve already written it so … what the hey…… Continue Reading →

Take Your Team on a Motivational Field Trip

Close your eyes. Imagine you’re a manager and you have 10 employees that you’re responsible for. Notice I didn’t say “10 employees who work for you”. That was on purpose. As a manager your REAL job regardless of what you… Continue Reading →

When is ONE thing really THREE things? Whenever you want to sell newspapers and employee engagement.

We are a one-trick pony society now. We have abandoned our ability to see our world as a complex set of iterations, interactions and interrelationships. We think the economy is ONLY a function of Fed interest policy. We think the… Continue Reading →

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