Gravity - Culture - Orbits - Recognition – Incentives (Pseudo-Science Stuff Ahead!)

Incentives and recognition are different things.  Very different. 

Unfortunately, there are people who don’t get it, don’t care or don’t want you to know – but still offer plenty of advice on both.  Many times it is just flat out wrong.  It's like comparing badgers and bananas.

Too often we want a recognition program to do what an incentive should and vice versa.  I think I can help us understand that difference with some pseudo-science... Let’s take a trip to our local Planetarium and get quick lesson on orbits and gravity.

 

Maintaining Your Company’s Orbit

I posted a while back on something called escape velocity based on an episode of The Colbert Report.  In that post I mentioned that your culture is like gravity.  It is the invisible force that acts on your company.  Now think of your company as a satellite orbiting the Earth.  Your company (or the satellite) stays in orbit around the Earth because of the speed it’s traveling and the gravitational pull of the Earth.  Those two forces combine to cancel each other out so that you continually go ‘round and ‘round.

The Earth is your mission/values/point-of-view.  Those values are the mass that is the source of your gravity (culture) that pulls on the satellite.  The things you do each day to drive business results are the velocity that keeps your satellite moving around your mission/values/POV – that’s why you stay in orbit.  Those three forces keep you in orbit.  All is well with the world.

If nothing changes – no resistance, no reduction in gravity or mass – that orbit should go on forever (physics folks don’t get on me for the little things – I’m talking in broad strokes here.)  But that isn’t reality.  Your company is constantly bombarded with little things that can affect your orbit.

New employees.  New products.  New customers.  New competitors.  All those things affect your orbit in one way or another.  In order to maintain your orbit you need to have some counteracting force.

Those forces are recognition and incentives.  But they do different things and are used in different situations.

 

First – Recognition

If your orbit is pretty strong to begin with (speed/gravity aren’t changing much) then you simply need small adjustments on a regular basis to keep you in the sweet zone of your orbit.  Think of them like little “retro-rockets" on the company.  As the company moves around the Earth, these rockets fire short bursts of energy moving the company slightly to the left, right, up, down – maintaining the orbit around the Earth.  You don’t need a lot of energy – but you need a lot of little bursts.  If you remember playing the arcade game Asteroids you know what I’m talking about.  Press the button hard and the little triangle ship goes shooting across the screen.  Press it quickly, in short bursts and it allows you to reposition your ship in the middle of the screen where you to continue to knock out asteroids.  

(For those who know what I’m talking about and are a little nostalgic – at the bottom of the post is an embedded game of asteroids – knock yourself out!  Left /Right Arrows spin your ship, space bar is your gun and "z" is shields and up arrow is thrust.  Email/RSS subscribers may need to click  out here to the page on our site to see and play the game.)

Next – Incentives

However, there are times when your orbit gets really out of whack.  Something major changes and those little retro-rockets won’t do the trick.  That’s when an incentive can really add to your ability to control your orbit.  Think of incentives as the major stages of a rocket that gets your satellite into orbit.  In order to break Earth’s gravity and get the satellite into space you need a lot of horsepower.  If you need to break out of your current orbit you need that kind of power as well.  That’s what an incentive can do for you.  It can change your orbit.

If your market changes, or you go through a huge reorg, or your competitor comes out with a game changing product – little bursts of energy will have some effect – but not nearly what you need to move your company (ie: satellite) to a new orbit.  You need the power of Titan rocket to blast you to that next level.  Once there – those retro-rockets of recognition are needed to fine-tune and maintain your position.

 

Too Much Power

The big mistake I see in many companies is they try to use big rockets to manage all their movement in their orbit causing massive change and just as massive over-corrections.  Just like in the Asteroids game – if you try to fine tune your position in the game using big power you just bounce around the screen and only really land in the center by accident.

 

You Need Power AND Finesse

The lesson here – use recognition to finesse and maintain your company around your culture while your orbit is stable.  But – but if you need to move the satellite on a larger scale – say to a new orbit – think in terms of using incentives as your power play and then kick in the retro’s once you get there.  

• Too much incentive and not enough recognition = too much movement and too little fine control means overshooting your target and more massive power corrections that bounce your company around.  
• Too much recognition and not enough incentive = slower change and possible problems getting to new orbits – and potentially your orbit can decay and you crash.

Does that help?  Does that make it easier to decide when to use incentives vs. recognition and why you need both? 

 

Asteroids made by Neave Games

 

Comments

[Scott Crandall]

Paul --- Great analogy. One other scenario I think is WAY too common: not ENOUGH recognition, and poorly designed/executed incentives.
To me, that's like a boat with no keel (the culture) and a badly connected rudder (the incentives). It's strictly by luck that it goes in the designed direction, and luckier that it hasn't sunk.
That sure looks like a lot of 21st Century companies.

[Marie Wiere]

Wow what a great creative analogy! I fully support your idea. Too many managers get confused and treat recognition as an incentive or vice-versa. Worse still are those that believe if one exists the other isn't necessary. Thanks for reminding leaders of an important lesson in a novel way.