You get what you reward!

You remember the old story about a fisherman walking along the river bank and he comes across a snake with a frog? He feels sorry for the frog as it’s about to be eaten and so he moves it out of the way. Then he feels sorry for the hungry snake and so he takes out his hip-flask and gives it a shot of whisky.

Next day he’s walking by the river and the snake is waiting for him - with two frogs!

And so what is the moral of this tale? Easy - you get what you reward! And it’s the same in organisations - you get what you reward. How you measure the performance of your people will determine how they behave and you will get what you reward. So there’s little point in rewarding adherence to rules and blind obedience - because that’s exactly what you will get. But you can’t reward adherence to rules and blind obedience and expect initiative and creativity. Incidentally if you do reward creativity and initiative then you may also get the odd spectacular failure!

So what does your organisation reward? And what do you reward?