It's not about motivation - it's about decisions

Incentive programs are really decision programs.  Whenever you put an incentive in place you're really asking the audience to make a decision about changing their behavior - and giving them a "bonus" for doing it.  (This really doesn't apply for recognition programs since that is typically an "after the fact" award to drive and reinforce cultural norms - not individual performance toward a goal.  Both influence behavior but they do it in different ways.)

Think about it: the goal of an incentive program is to present two options 1.) do the same thing you've always done  and 2.) do something different and we'll give you "X".  The "X" can be additional vacation time, points redeemable for merchandise, gift cards, or a travel award.  It's not really a motivation program - it's a decision influence program.  The audience can choose to not change behavior (typically no downside ie: punishment) or they can choose to change behavior and get the "bonus."

Decision Programs

One of the reasons I2I doesn't say we're a "motivation" consultancy is because we don't "do motivation" but we do believe we provide clients with a better "decision program" - one that packages the offer and the outcome differently - in a way that gets audiences to make a decision in favor of behavior change.  Because of that focus - we're less worried about whether you use a catalog or debit card - but are very interested in how people make decisions so we can present your "decision program" in a way that gets more people to make a decision to change a behavior.

Long intro to this...

Video of Dan Gilbert at TedTalk on how we make decisions.  Dan works in the Psychology Department at Harvard University has presented at TED and has been on the Colbert Report.  And he's a pretty good presenter to boot.

The focus of Dan's research is on how we make decisions related to our happiness but I think it translates into how we make decisions in general - and specifically in whether we "buy into" an incentive or not.

The video (click through to see video if you can't see it in your reader or email box) is 35 minutes long - but I can tell you if you are in any way interested in how people make decisions it is so worth the time.

Dan covers a lot of ground in those 35 minutes - almost too much.  I've seen many of his examples of how our "decision brain" works in other documents, books and presentations, but he puts it together well.  I don't want to bore you by recapping the info in the video but the important elements of his talk are:

• Decisions are based on a simple formula - the odds we will get what we want times the value of what the end result is.  This is based on Bernoulli's expectancy formula.  Unfortunately, humans don't estimate odds well - nor do we estimate value of the gain well.  Because we don't do those two things well, the outcome from the equation doesn't always make sense.
• People calculate odds based on how easily things are remembered.  The easier we remember something the more likely we are to assume the odds are greater of that thing.  Even if it isn't.
• Value is influenced by past experience and its relationship to other things - both of which influence how much value we place on something.  The very interesting thing is that we estimate the value of something in context of other things - but - we experience the value of that thing without the influence of the thing that caused us to predict the value.  The two situations mean the value will different (can you say buyers' remorse?)

These issues have a lot to do with how you present the "value of behavior change."  An incentive program should focus on these issues.  First we need to make seeing the odds as good - in an incentive it's 100% since it's based solely on my performance and nothing else.  Second, we need to position the awards in relation with something else - ie: the pain of not getting the award perhaps?

There are many other ways this information could be used to help design a program - but I don't want to give away ALL our secrets.

All in all - a great 35 minutes. 

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