Influence and Incentives – More than a toaster

You may have noticed at the bottom of the left sidebar in My Library section a few new
books in my mix of bedside reading.  I haven’t read them all yet – but
they are queued up and ready to go.

One I finished a few weeks back is of particular note:  "Influencer – The Power To Change Anything."

This book, is good from the
point of view that it lays out a nice framework for influencing
behavior. 

And it’s not all about awards.

If you’ve read anything on this blog for a while you know I firmly believe that incentives are only one tool in the toolbox that organizations should use to align behavior.  I believe they are the bluntest tool, and the least enduring.  In fact, applied incorrectly they can exacerbate an already bad business environment by creating the wrong behaviors in the long run.  I don’t disagree that awards are important – they just aren’t the ONLY thing that can drive behavior.

The book says it this way:

"Stories of well-intended rewards that inadvertently backfire are legion.  The primary cause of most of these debacles is that individuals attempt to influence behaviors by using rewards as their first motivational strategy.  In a well-balanced change effort, rewards come third.  Influence masters first ensure that vital behaviors connect to intrinsic satisfaction.  Next, they line up social support.  They double check both of these areas before they finally choose extrinsic rewards to motivate  behavior."

The key to influencing  behavior starts with finding the key vital behaviors that drive performance.  Once the vital behaviors are identified then the ability to influence these behaviors comes down to six sources of influence:

• Personal Motivation – making the undesirable behavior desirable
• Personal Ability – practicing  the smaller steps in the total behavior
• Social Motivation – harness peer pressure, make the new behavior normal behavior
• Social Ability – ensure the group has the tools to work as a group and support the group
• Structural Motivation – rewards and accountability
• Structural Ability – changing the physical world the behavior resides in

I like the framework.  I think we could even sum it up more:

Barriers to change are either "can’t do it" or "won’t do it."  The "can’t" or "won’t" are either individual issues or company issues.

Too many companies address only the personal side of this – they make sure people are trained and that they have "incentives" to change.  Not many companies change the overall social atmosphere around a behavior – and fewer still look at the physical environment (or technological environment.)