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In this great TED talk by author Dan Pink, he argues that while incentives improve people’s performance on routine tasks, just the opposite is true when creativity or problem solving is involved. Incentives not only fail to improve performance on creative tasks, they diminish it. What’s more, the larger the reward, the worse the performance. Might be something to think about when deciding just how to motivate lawyers.
Watch the entire talk (it is roughly 18 minutes), it is worth your time.
Hi Matt,
A great video but I have a question. At the risk of suggesting that staff don’t need bonuses (God knows they don’t get paid enough to work with lawyers), I am wondering if you are suggesting that staff don’t need to be creative??
In the 21 years that I worked as a ‘non-lawyer’(that label is worth another comment but I digress), I found that I needed to work creatively every day. My experience is that other staff did the same.
You could argue that lawyer work requires more creativity if you wanted to continue along the same thinking. They are, after all, problem solvers for their clients. I would argue that the staff in law firms are there for the same reason – to support the firm’s clients.
In today’s world we all have to work creatively whether we have a law degree or not.
Matt,
I’ve been reading quite a bit about #norewards lately, and this video was a perfect capstone to what I’ve been reading. Pink tells his story – I mean, makes his case – quite well. The challenge as I see it is coming up with a way to compensate your creative folks adequately enough that bonuses and other extrinsic rewards aren’t needed. (Of course, that is on top of providing a job that actually exercises their intrinsic motivation!)
I also couldn’t help thinking about what the science of rewards/incentives would have to say about the greatest creative endeavor of all – living a good life. But that, I think, is a topic for another time and another place.