I see a common confusion: treating incentivizing as the same thing as motivating.
An incentive can move behavior short term. But when it’s designed poorly, it does something more dangerous: it distorts decisions.
And distorted decisions look like:
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- speed without quality
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- closures without feasibility
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- promises that consume margin
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- teams learning how to protect themselves from the system.
I don’t treat incentives as an HR “extra”. I treat them as operational architecture.
## Incentives: the rule that never fails
One rule is non-negotiable:
what you reward repeats.
And what you punish gets hidden.
So when something goes wrong, my first question isn’t “why aren’t people engaged?”
My first question is:
> “What is the system rewarding by accident?”
Most motivation problems are not apathy. They’re incoherence.
## Motivation isn’t enthusiasm. It’s low friction + high fairness + clear meaning
When a team “loses motivation”, I usually find three ingredients:
1) friction: everything costs more than it should
2) perceived unfairness: “it doesn’t matter what I do”
3) blurred meaning: it’s unclear what “good work” looks like
If I only tweak money and leave those untouched, I buy weeks, not stability.
## The most expensive mistake: reward one slice and pay the rest with margin
Poor incentives are often logical at first. The issue is side effects.
Typical distortions:
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- reward speed, pay with rework
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- reward volume, pay with overload
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- reward “closing”, pay with downstream conflict
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- reward “zero issues”, pay with hiding
I’m not worried about an incentive that “doesn’t motivate.”
I’m worried about one that motivates the wrong thing.
## How I detect incentives that are breaking the system (before the numbers scream)
### Signs of gaming
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- the metric is hit, but internal complaints rise
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- people ask for exceptions to “make the target”
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- urgency spikes at period end
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- shortcuts appear in “invisible” controls
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- invisible work grows (adjustments, follow-ups, re-explaining)
That’s when the indicator stopped being a signal and became the goal.
### Signs of broken fairness
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- “the same people always get recognized”
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- “if you do it well, you inherit more work”
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- “results depend on other teams anyway”
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- “saying no gets you punished”
Motivation erodes when effort and recognition feel unrelated.
## Three layers that hold incentives and motivation together
### Layer 1: rules of the game
If rules are fuzzy, energy goes into self-protection.
Rules include: what wins when everything is urgent, what “done well” means, and what decisions can be made without escalation.
### Layer 2: measurement and signals
A single metric invites optimization at the expense of the rest. Balanced signals reduce distortion.
### Layer 3: recognition and progression
Not all recognition is money. Not all progression is hierarchy.
If there’s no story of growth (“what does getting better look like here?”), people disconnect even with bonuses.
## The sensitive point: incentives can’t depend on what people don’t control
If outcomes depend heavily on others, effort stops feeling useful and cynicism grows.
When control is low, incentives should shift: more team/process/standard focused, less isolated outcomes.
## Individual vs team incentives: the hidden conflict
Individual: clarity, but internal competition risk. Team: collaboration, but “no one owns it” risk.
What matters is this question:
> “What behavior must be natural under pressure?”
If I want collaboration under pressure, I can’t reward individual wins that damage the next handoff.
## Motivation collapses when the system rewards urgency
In some companies, status comes from “firefighting”.
Then the system teaches:
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- whoever arrives late “owns” the decision
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- whoever is loud wins
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- whoever prevents issues is invisible
When chaos equals prestige, formal incentives become irrelevant.
## Incentives that tend to work (when the system is ready)
No universal recipes—only criteria.
Incentives tend to work when:
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- “good” is defined by a standard
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- people have real means to achieve it
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- signals don’t contradict each other
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- recognition feels fair
They tend to fail when used to mask basics:
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- missing capacity
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- unclear roles
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- decisions without boundaries
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- processes that force improvisation
Then incentives become a fee for enduring dysfunction.
## What’s usually forgotten: motivation is also removing obstacles
When I hear “we need to motivate the team”, I often translate:
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- remove friction no one is owning
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- reduce uncertainty
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- clarify priorities
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- protect coherent decisions
Motivation isn’t injected. It’s enabled when work feels doable again.
## Diagnostic questions I ask before touching any incentive scheme
1) What counts as success: outcome, process, or both?
2) How much is controllable by the person vs the system?
3) What bad behavior could grow if I reward this metric?
4) What cross-team conflict will this create?
5) Where will the problem hide if I punish it?
6) What fairness signal does the “do it right” person receive?
7) What happens to learning: rewarded, ignored, or penalized?
If I can’t answer, I’m not ready to pay for behaviors.
## The most important design: coherence between promise, capacity, and recognition
I want alignment between:
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- the external promise
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- internal capacity
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- what the company reinforces
When these aren’t aligned, people don’t “fail”. They adapt to survive—rationally, but expensively.
Closing: I don’t want intense motivation. I want sustainable motivation.
The motivation I care about isn’t hype. It’s consistency:
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- people know what “good work” is
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- effort feels meaningful
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- the system doesn’t force a choice between doing it right and looking good
If you want, we’ll review it in 15 minutes: where you’re rewarding the wrong signals, which incentives are distorting decisions, and what criteria to use to redesign motivation without buying new problems.
