Episode 6 – Rewarding for Behavior A while hoping for B

Rewarding for A while hoping for B

Today we are going to talk about a management classic paper – Rewarding for behavior A while expecting behavior B.

Something that is highly relevant to us as we set goals for ourselves and our teams – we’ll look at it using an actual real life story. The famous story related to Australia which began as a prison colony for England…

“Whether dealing with monkeys, rats, or human beings, it is hardly controversial to state that most organisms seek information concerning what activities are rewarded, and then seek to do (or at least pretend to do) those things, often to the virtual exclusion of activities not rewarded.

Nevertheless, numerous examples exist of reward systems that are fouled up in that the types of behavior rewarded are those which the rewarder is trying to discourage, while the behavior desired is not being rewarded at all”