Allow Incentive Programs to "Free Form"

Believe it or not I had not seen "August Rush" until this past weekend.  I think the ending was a bit "dieu ex machina" but you don't come here for movie reviews.  I played guitar in grade school and high school a bit - enough to justify buying one but not enough to justify continuing to play.  In my day, playing the guitar, having long hair and wearing old army coats was what everyone did.  And bowing to consensus (remember that as a behavior influencer?) I did the same.  So I was a pretty enthralled with the guitar playing in the movie.

If you haven't seen the movie - watch the clip I've embedded.  The clip is a compilation of some of the guitar playing by the "prodigy" in the movie.  It runs about 5 minutes so you can either A.) play it through and come back to the post - or B.) play it and let it run as you continue to read.

The first 2:00 minutes of the clip is when the prodigy plays the guitar for the first time.  Watch as he starts by pounding on the strings.  See how he experiments with making sounds from the guitar.  He's not following the rules.  He's not playing like others.  He's playing the guitar in a new way.  My first thoughts when I saw this were - what if we were presented with a situation where we didn't know the rules?  How would we solve the problem?

Open Up Your Program Rules
In most incentive and reward programs we spell out the behaviors and outcomes we want and then reward them.  And if designed correctly - they will drive the behaviors and the results we expect.

But... 

...what if we didn't know "the best practice?"  What if we were approaching this for the first time?  What would happen?  I don't know and neither do you.  That's the point. 

If we don't allow for "free form" we don't know what's possible. 

What have you included in your incentive and reward program that allows for people to "break the rules?"  Is there a category or criteria that allows a participant to take a risk and try something new?  Is there a way for the group to recognize a tangential thinker in the group?  If not, you might just want to see what would happen when you give a group the option.