Rewards....

For a long time, rewards were the be-all and end-all of motivation. Everyone knew that the way to encourage people to achieve better results were to reward better results. Bonuses, incentive schemes and pay grades were created to implement this.

Then science starts interfering and pointing out that, actually, rewards only motivate in a very narrow set of circumstances and that there is a huge gap between what science knows and what business does. That’s what Dan Pink talks about in his excellent TED presentation.

Now the effect of rewarding students for performance and good behavior in schools have been tested very rigorously and the results appear in this excellent Time article, according to which some rewards do lead to better performance.

So which is it? Do rewards motivate us to shine or don’t they? This is not only interesting for schools, the findings may apply to businesses as well.

Some background:

A Harvard economist named Roland Fryer Jr. did something education researchers almost never do: he ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6.3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. He got death threats, but he carried on. The results represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom — and one of the more rigorous studies ever on anything in education policy.

The results were surprising:

The experiment ran in four cities: Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York. Each city had its own unique model of incentives, to see which would work best. Some kids were paid for good test scores, others for not fighting with one another. The results are fascinating and surprising. They remind us that kids, like grownups, are not puppets. They don’t always respond the way we expect.

In New York the study resulted in no improvement in test scores. Fryer called the results “as zero as zero gets.” New York was ironically the city where students were rewarded for better test scores.

The program that got the best results was in Dallas:

Schools in Dallas got the simplest scheme and the one targeting the youngest children: every time second-graders read a book and successfully completed a computerized quiz about it, they earned $2. Straightforward — and cheap. The average earning would turn out to be about $14 (for seven books read) per year.

So what might explain the difference? Why did one scheme fail while another got results?

I think the answer might lie in the fact that the NY scheme rewarded results while the Dallas scheme rewarded the process, ie. the actual steps towards the results.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I do think that this carries directly over to the business world. At work it is more motivating to reward effort rather than results because while results are rarely directly under your own control, your efforts are.

In other words, you can work your butt off on a project or a sale and still not get it because of factors completely outside of your influence. Or in the current crisis, you can work hard to meet your sales budget, but there’s no hope in hell you will, because the entire market is down 15%. Conversely, you might be a no-good, talentless slacker but due to a general increase in the market or one windfall client you still reach your goals for the year.

This is what Srikumar S. Rao talked about at our last conference, where he encouraged the audience to focus on the process, not the outcome.

Go read the whole article at Time.com – it’s fascinating stuff.

Your take

What do you think? Do rewards motivate you? How and when do you like to be rewarded? Are there any circumstances where rewards tend to demotivate you? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

I found this on a website, I liked it and so i added it to my blog :)

House Hunting

House is something that I used to take it for granted, untill recently i never realized the importance of a house, its location, its shape, size, the color on walls, and the other details. Just recently i was looking for a house / apt to move in and that is when i realized that their are so many things that one has to consider before we step in to a new place. The whole exercise was a nice challenge and learning, in the past i have been lucky as i was able to finalize after seeing 3-4 units, however this time was a good test, first i started checking houses in my current village (area / locality) then saw a few near my office, and then also checked out eastwood (the place where i used to live when i moved to manila from india). Each time i would meet a broker, they would show me houses better then the last, and this added to my dilemma, i checked about 30 units, then shortlisted 3 and then zeroed on 1 unit.

I love this place, it gives a nice cozy and warm feeling, the view is very nice and the best part is that its centrally located, everything that i need ( temple, fresh produce, grocery, indian grocery,cinema hospital, etc etc... everything is within walking distance from this place).

???

Off late i have been wondering..

What is Krsna's plan when he gets us to meet different people, some are good and some are bad. And sometimes they are absolutely amazing and we start liking them... but suddenly the "Togetherness" is broken.

What is Krsna's plan when He gets us close to certain individuals only to part them in a short period of time?

Soo many questions. ...

3 idots

Last night i watched 3 Idiots for the 4th time, I admit that I totally love the film! Perhaps that's because I could so relate to it, having been in the same 'idiotic' shoes about half a decade ago.

Why did we end up in engineering? I for one simply went by the overriding family profession. Some a la Farhan gave in to parental pressure, others like Raju figured an engineering graduate fresh out of college would get a job easier than an arts, science or commerce graduate, still others decided the four-year long engineering course would complete the 16 yrs of education required to be eligible for the GRE, just a precious few Ranchos came because textiles is what they could visualise doing for the rest of their lives.

As we settled in, we discovered the dreaded 's' word in all engineering colleges - submissions. So we got about writing assignment after assignment, drawing designs after designs and doing GT (Glass tracing) after GT. Sure we understood that the observations, inferences and graphs would differ every time the experiment was done, but why pray did we need to hand write the procedure, that had remained the same for the past 20 years? But 'photocopy' was taboo. And the worst part, thanks to some apparatus not functioning properly, or not functioning at all, we actually copied the one thing we shouldn't have - the actual findings, from reports handed down by our seniors!

Then came the even more fearful oral examinations or vivas as they're popularly called. The boy girl ratio in our class was roughly 50:1. So girls always found a softer corner in the examiners heart. I mostly got lucky with Vivas, my image of mischief monger would be shattered because of my ability to answer most of the questions and this would leave the examiners confused.

During the written examinations, if you got the right answer but didn't get it in the requisite number of 'steps', chances are your marks would be cut. So we all prayed to the God of memory rather than the God of logic.

When we finally stepped out of the Three-year chaos, not one of us was equipped to even read a salary slip, and most of us lacked any communication skills whatsoever - the fallouts of a unilateral, not to mention outdated, syllabus.

I have great expectations from the current HRD minister, who's at least shown some gumption in revamping the school system. Whether he'll ever make higher education more flexible is questionable, but the real point is, that the onus isn't purely on the government. It's on society at large, parents who don't bother to ask their child what their hearts calling is, teachers who don't bother counselling students, professors who insist on memory rather than knowledge, recruiters who go purely by grades and peers who make competition an evil word.

Gopalji

Today i am very happy, coz one of my most cherished desire got fulfilled. Since quite a long time i have nourished a desire to worship Lord Krsna in his Shalirgram shila form, and finally now he has come in the most beautiful form of Sri Gopalji. Some of Gopalji's pictures are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/kirtanislife/GopaljiASweetGuest#

Order in chaos

Recently I finished reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, and this term “Order in chaos” keeps sprouting up every now and them. I visited India in December, the main reason was to celebrate my Daddy’s 60th Birthday, it was a mile stone and I wanted to be with my family to celebrate it.
This time I was trying to see India from another prospective, I tried to forget that I was born and bought up here, and tried to see how my motherland looks from a fresh pair of eyes. At first it was quite scary; Order in chaos is the word that my best describe my feelings. From the very minute we touch down at the airport, there are drones of people everywhere, people running, people shouting, people resting, its like something magical is happening every minute, but at the same time people seem to be so much at ease. There is a very unusual balance here, balance between chaos and peace, something or the other is happening every minute; however everyone seems so much at ease. Its truly AWESOME. How can one write about India without mentioning the word EMOTION, its like emotions are engraved in every Indians DNA, emotions run high everywhere, everyone opens their hearts out in a very unique way and welcomes you into their own world. Its such an unique feeling, something so strong that its difficult to express in words, the bonds between people are stronger than their houses, the warmth in their heart is warmer than the tropical summer.
I am from Mumbai, the land of Dalal street (india’s very own Wall street), the land of bollywood, mumbai is the economic hub of india. I was shocked to see, that a city that proud’s its self for countless things and which has an GDP of 7%, does not tell a great story. The gap between GDP growth and infrastructure to support that growth is too large and it seems to be growing each year. Having said that, its also the most populated city of india, people from all parts and all walks of life come to Mumbai. It’s a place where dreams come true, the only thing that one needs is hard work and belief in their dreams. There is an amazing energy all around, and its very contagious, we are creative, we hate details, we are spontaneous and we like to leave things open-ended. We are the creative geniuses of the world. Our energy is focused into the future; the next project, the next idea, the next grand scheme. Unfortunately, paper belongs to the past or at best the present. Our attention is on the future. Therefore, clutter is the natural side effect of being creative! That doesn't mean we don't have to deal with it, it just means we have a good excuse for our mess!