Quotes About Performance

CARROTS AND STICKS: The Seven Deadly Flaws 1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation. 2. They can diminish performance. 3. They can crush creativity. 4. They can crowd out good behavior. 5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. 6. They can become addictive. 7. They can foster short-term thinking.

Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don't have schedules. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes BY ALFIE KOHN

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else BY GEOFF COLVIN     What's

The good news is that the science demonstrates that once people relearn the fundamental practices and attitudes, and unlearn the negative ones, their motivation, and their ultimate performance, often soars. Any Type X can become a Type I.

Self-criticism can sometimes motivate our performance when we criticize ourselves for particular actions rather than for deep-seated tendencies. But unless carefully managed and contained, self-criticism can become a form of inner-directed virtue signaling. It projects toughness and ambition, but often leads to rumination and hopelessness instead of productive action.

Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse

Motivation 2.0 is similar. At its heart are two elegant and simple ideas: Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. Punishing an activity will get you less of it.

Tuckman believed that all teams proceeded through four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing.

Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile have found that external rewards and punishments—both carrots and sticks—can work nicely for algorithmic tasks. But they can be devastating for heuristic ones.

One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. (Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi titled his first book on autotelic experiences Beyond Boredom and Anxiety.)

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. But once we've cleared the table, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims.

Careful consideration of reward effects reported in 128 experiments lead to the conclusion that tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation

And by diminishing intrinsic motivation, they can send performance, creativity, and even upstanding behavior toppling like dominoes. Let's call this the Sawyer Effect.a A sampling of intriguing experiments around the world reveals the four realms where this effect

The better strategy is to get compensation right—and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

Type X behavior often holds an entity theory of intelligence, prefers performance goals to learning goals, and disdains effort as a sign of weakness. Type I behavior has an incremental theory of intelligence, prizes learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matters. Begin with one mindset, and mastery is impossible. Begin with the other, and it can be inevitable.

before long, the existing reward may no longer suffice. It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces the principal to offer larger rewards to achieve the same effect.20

injecting the personal into the professional can boost performance and increase quality of care.

High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. DeskTime never published the data in a peer-reviewed journal, so your mileage may vary. But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck. Even "micro-breaks" can be helpful.19

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.

Las ventas y el teatro tienen mucho en común. Ambos requieren agallas.

Substantial evidence demonstrates that in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting can induce unethical behavior.

BMW's Chris Bangle says, "We don't make 'automobiles.'" BMW makes "moving works of art that express the driver's love of quality.

A brief reminder of the purpose of their work doubled their performance.