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Paul Marciano, Ph.D. is an entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and president of Whiteboard, a human relations consulting firm committed to helping organizations cultivate, manage, and grow their human potential. Dr. Marciano earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in clinical psychology at Yale University and hasserved on the faculties at Davidson College and Princeton University.

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Carrots and Sticks Don't Work

McGraw-Hill

Contents

Chapter One

"The only carrots that interest me are the number of carats in a diamond."

—Mae West

"Carrots and sticks" refers to using rewards and punishment to motivate others. This system is based on the principles of operant conditioning. Similarly, there is the expression "carrot-on-a-stick," which conjures up the image of a carrot tied to a stick held just beyond the reach of a donkey to encourage the animal to go faster. In organizations, "carrots" refer to rewards or incentives dangled in front of employees to motivate them to strive toward some goal. These incentives range from coffee mugs to lucrative financial bonuses and everything in between. The obvious assumption is that employees are actually motivated by the particular carrot being offered.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning refers to specific behavioral strategies developed by B. F. Skinner to change behavior. Terms associated with Skinner's approach, such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment, are often bantered about among human resources managers, business leaders, and consultants as they seek to motivate employees. Unfortunately, these terms have become widely misunderstood and misused.

Reinforcement—both positive and negative—refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring in the future. Common forms of positive reinforcement include praise, privileges, money, and various rewards. Negative reinforcement refers to the removal of an aversive stimulus. For example, when a mother picks up a crying baby and the baby stops crying, the mother is negatively reinforced and thus more likely to pick up the baby when it cries in the future. Although it is possible to use negative reinforcement as a motivational strategy in the workplace, it is highly uncommon.

Punishment refers to adverse consequences that decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring again in the future. Common forms of punishment include ignoring, penalties, fines, and taking away privileges. In the workplace, suspending an employee without pay is an example of using punishment to change behavior.

Here's the important part: in order for a consequence to be considered reinforcing or punishing, it must impact the probability of the behavior occurring again. If the consequence does not increase or decrease the likelihood of the behavior, then it does not meet the criteria as reinforcement or punishment.

This distinction is important because it suggests that whether a consequence is reinforcing or punishing depends on the individual and may differ further depending on the situation and source of the consequence (i.e., the person delivering it). For example, if your boss yells at you for being late to work and you start coming in on time, then the boss's yelling served as a form of punishment because it impacted your behavior. In contrast, if your wife yells at you for coming home late from work and your behavior does not change, then her yelling is not punishment— it is nagging.

It would be highly inaccurate and irresponsible of me to suggest that the principles of operant conditioning are ineffective. Thousands of empirical studies have demonstrated the power of operant conditioning to motivate animals, children, and adults to engage in specific behaviors in an effort to attain rewards. While in graduate school, I spent several years learning, researching, applying, and teaching these principles to help change the behavior of children diagnosed with conduct disorder. In fact, whether you realize it or not, we all use reinforcement and punishment every day in our personal lives. Whether you are feeding your cat because she is meowing for food, thanking your child for making his bed, or withholding affection from your significant other because he forgot your anniversary, you are using the techniques of operant conditioning to shape the behavior of those around you—as your behavior is being shaped in kind. I have always been frustrated by parents and supervisors who resist learning about the principles of behavior modification because they do not want to "manipulate" their children or employees. You use these techniques every day; wouldn't it be nice to know what you're doing?

There is nothing wrong with the principles of operant conditioning. It is just that they don't work in the context of a business environment where you need people to use their minds. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about "fixing" traditional reward and recognition programs because the problem isn't with these programs at all; the problem is the fundamental, underlying assumption that to maximize the productivity of our employees we need to motivate them.

We have been led to believe that the same principles that get a mouse or pigeon to "work hard" are the ones that we should use to make human beings more productive. Here's the news-flash: human beings performing work in organizations are actually different from mice running in mazes and pressing bars for food pellets. People are complex beings filled with thoughts, feelings, attitudes, personalities, skills, experiences, and goals whose work is typically complex and requires higher-order cognitive skills including problem solving and decision making. Moreover, we work with other complex human beings in complex organizations. Although it may feel like it at times, we are not hamsters running on a wheel.

A Brief History of Human Motivation

For nearly all of human history, people have been motivated using "sticks," not "carrots." Why? Before the Industrial Revolution, there were few employees; most work that wasn't accomplished by the self-employed was done by slaves, criminals, and military personnel, and those who did not work hard were physically punished or killed, which are quite effective motivational techniques. It was not until the Industrial Revolution and the building of factories that there was a need to employ large numbers of free citizens. Thus, the roots of today's workforce are less than two hundred years old. (Pharaohs did not have to worry about the principles of operant conditioning!) In fact, it has been in only the past one hundred years that researchers, scientists, and business leaders have systematically approached the study of employee motivation and productivity. Let's take a look at some of the most important and influential work during this time.

Frederick Taylor—Father of Scientific Management

As factories and assembly lines grew, a new discipline emerged: scientific management. Often considered the father of this movement, Frederick Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Taylor had worked for Bethlehem Steel and was interested in maximizing productivity. He undertook careful study of the tools, processes, and methods used in the manufacturing process. Coupled with the pioneering work of psychologists Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, time and motion studies became, and still are, a cornerstone of efficient manufacturing processes. Obvious but important, the work involved entirely manual labor and almost no thinking. In fact, referring to his studies with steel workers, Taylor wrote:

This work is so crude and elementary in its nature that...