"Useless" Rewards

So it's been a while since the last post. Looking for a job is a lot of work...

Motivation theory and rewards have been coming up a lot in just about all of my classes. Psychology and design are becoming more and more intertwined as is evidenced by the rising popularity of persuasive design. Anyway, I wrote this piece a while back and wanted to share it.

David McGaw, a consultant at Embarcadero Partners, wrote that there are “Six G’s of rewards: Gold, Guts, Glory, Good, Group, Growth.” Each G represents a type of reward that can be thought of as an incentive. Gold represents monetary rewards; Guts is the reward for working on a difficult problem; Glory is private and public recognition for having completed a project; Good is the reward that one feels for altruistic work; Group is the feeling for having contributed to a collective effort; and Growth is the reward for having learned new skills or ideas.

One of the most interesting rewards is “Glory.” Glory is not a monetary award but its implications can be among the most significant. Many companies term these awards “worthless”; however, they can be effective tools for recognizing people quickly after job is done. This is especially important considering that people are happier to take a small reward in the short term rather than a larger reward in the future (this is an economic observation called hyperbolic discounting). 

Colgate-Palmolive’s Global R&D group initiated a recognition economy by distributing symbolic wooden nickels to colleagues who had made noteworthy contributions to their projects. People then pass the wooden nickels on to others when they feel somebody is deserving. These little tokens of recognition (i.e., rewards in the form of glory) are often passed out in meetings, but it is not uncommon for an employee to come to work and find a few nickels anonymously placed at their desks. This informal recognition encourages a collective spirit and helps promote the free flow of ideas.

Airbnb has a similar program in place on their internal social network. For recognition of a job well done, employees can send others “appreciations.” The appreciations appear on every public monitor around the office so that all employees can see. Airbnb is so dedicated to this program that it even has a current job opening for a “Recognition Program Coordinator."

Making Meetings Fun

We have a lot of meetings at the Institute of Design. And I mean a lot of meetings. These meetings typically run anywhere from 2-5 hours (and sometimes a lot longer). Most often, problems occur when you have competing directions from different members of a team, and so I did some research to look into what other companies do to make meetings more productive. 

It is difficult to foster trust and collaboration in a business that requires employees to pitch ideas and face potential rejection. To cultivate these values, and help mitigate the stress that comes with competition, Lavoie created a business game called “Mutual Fun.” Mutual Fun is an internal stock exchange game designed to create a safe environment for promoting (or “killing”) ideas. How it works is that an idea is proposed and placed into one of three separate markets: "Savings Bonds,” which are ideas that can save the company money; “Bow Jones,” which consists of ideas that utilize existing technology for new products or services; and “Spazdaq,” which is made up of ideas of new technologies for exploration. Each idea is listed as an individual stock in one of the aforementioned markets and every employee is given ten thousand dollars of play money to invest in ideas. In the spirit of creating community, each idea needs not just a creator but also a mentor or “prophet” to be an evangelist for the idea. Interestingly, Mutual Fun falls outside of an employ’s typical work and yet employee involvement is as high as 95%. This is due in part to the face that while Mutual Fun is a “community service” project (benefitting the company as a whole), bonuses are based on participation in the game. The gamification of idea generation (tied to real monetary incentives) serves to promote innovation and also encourages a sense of community. The popularity of the game even became a product itself as several large corporations have licensed it for their own use.

Understanding The T-Shaped Employee

As I finish grad school and start looking for a job (please hire me!), I often think about what companies are looking for in an employee. Anyway, I took some time to write about "T-shaped" employees.

At the famous design consultancy, IDEO, the CEO has a propensity to hire what he calls “T-shaped” people: people whose characteristics resemble the letter “T.” T-shaped people have two significant traits. The vertical stroke of the “T” represents depth in a skill or particular discipline. This can pertain to any number of fields: design, science, analytics, engineering, etc. The horizontal stroke of the “T” is represents a disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It reflects the ability for empathy as well as enthusiasm about other people’s specialties. Of less interest are “I” shaped people who may have expertise but find it difficult to collaborate because they are too self-involved and don’t necessarily appreciate others’ talents. 

At IA Collaborative, a design consultancy based in Chicago, the firm is only devoted to hiring T-shaped people but also actively works to create and inspire them. Once a month, the firm takes a break from their day-to-day routine and employees go on a “design excursion.” These excursions are meant to inspire the imagination and broaden horizons. Some of the latest trips have been to a leather tannery, a violin maker, the Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House, and Fermilab (one of the most famous particle physics laboratories). The firm also brings in speakers during lunch hours to give seminars (also known as “leminars,” a combination of lunch and seminar). IA Collaborative leaders do not expect that any of their employees will decide to pursue, for example, particle physics; however, the very act of breaking out of the office to explore new topics produces an excitement and curiosity that keeps employees interested in the company; allows for team bonding; and most importantly, symbolizes the characteristics of the kinds of employees that they want at their firm.