Last year, we wrote a series of blogs outlining some of the research concerning the usefulness of "carrot and stick" motivation techniques. The findings of the research were very clear: Providing extrinsic rewards cannot be blindly relied upon to help motivate individuals to perform better.
It's not that rewards should never be used. In some cases (and for some people), incentives do have a positive impact on both individual and team performance. But, don't be lulled into thinking this motivation technique is some kind of magic bullet. It's not. Offering an incentive can sometimes produce negative results.
In the case of our previous series, researchers demonstrated that trying to incentivize tasks that involve creativity was particularly ineffective. New research has now demonstrated offering incentives to top performers in your organization may also prove counterproductive in the long run.
The new research was recently summarized by Max Nisen at Business Insider,
"Prizes and rewards are designed to produce more effort, to give people something to strive towards. But what happens once they actually get it? According to a new study by Harvard's George Borjas and Notre Dame's Kirk Doran of recipients of the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, winning big actually kills productivity.
Mathematicians who win it publish far less in the years afterwards than similarly brilliant "contenders"
It goes to show that major awards and recognition can have unintended consequences.
The drop off is pretty massive, as this chart shows:
This is explained, in part, by the classic economic "wealth effect." The impact of the Fields medal is significant. It's more prestigious than any other prize, and though the financial reward is a meager $15,000, the career and research opportunities available to a winner expand massively.Because they've achieved so much "wealth" in terms of prestige, job security, and opportunity, winners are more likely to choose leisure activities over work, just as someone who suddenly comes into significant monetary rewards might.
Not only do they produce fewer papers, but the ones they do write are relatively less important. And winners take fewer mentees, as well.
The authors did find one surprising positive effect. Though they publish less, winners also take more risks in the future. They've already reached the pinnacle of their field, so they feel free to pursue moonshots, new areas of mathematics that they think are fascinating or vital.
The risk is quite large. The winners know they're capable of doing extraordinary work in a particular area. Moving outside of it makes future results far less certain. Their particular gifts or talent might not translate well, and they're going to have to learn new skills and an entirely new body of research in the new area, which is all very time consuming.
The researchers term movement outside the core field, "cognitive mobility," and its increase explains about half of the drop off in productivity for medal winners.
The prize frees them up in an extremely significant way. In the years leading up to the medal year, the likelihood of a mathematician straying from their comfort zone is very rare, at just 5%. For prize-winners, the rate quintuples to 25%."
This research obviously covers a very specific and unique population, but it has implications for high performers in any area. Whether it's promising a promotion, a raise, or an award, leaders have to think about the aftermath as well as the competition itself.
It's important to reward achievement, but it may also have the unintended side effect of creating complacency. At the same time, there's something to be said for giving top performers the opportunity and safety net required to do really innovative work, even if it's less certain and takes longer.
When this research is paired with Daniel Pink's observations highlighted in our previous series, it should be worth at least a prolonged head scratch. As I said previously,
"These days, carrots and sticks will often do more harm than good. The time has come to tap into the deeply human need to direct our own lives and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world."
Exactly.
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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
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