Daniel Pink's Drive

Carrots and Sticks

Working in higher education for over twenty years, I have witnessed the seven deadly flaws of carrots and sticks in action on many occasions.  According to Daniel Pink, Carrots and Sticks: The Seven Deadly Flaws (p. 57) are:

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
2. They can diminish performance
3. They can crush creativity
4. They can crowd out good behavior
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
6. They can become addictive
7. They can foster short-term thinking

One example that comes to mind relates to IT projects. Working in IT, some times it is necessary to create custom applications for specific department needs.  The carrot is used to entice programmers to work on a new project.  They become very excited about the opportunity.  But the carrot usually always comes with a stick of an incredibly short deadline.  Instead of managing the customer’s expectations and letting them know it will take more time to provide them a quality product the pressure is put on the programmer.  This can crush creativity and fosters short-term thinking.  I don’t believe that I have ever seen carrots and sticks work on a long-term basis.  You could provide someone a raise to do a job and increase his or her performance but it only works on a short-term basis or not at all. 

Autonomy

In my current position I have a great deal of autonomy.  I am able to determine my work time, tasks, and technique.  I am tuned in to the needs of those on campus and the University as a whole. I believe my past performance and work production have provided me the ability to have autonomy in my position. I am able to work on many projects at once and move between them as I see the priorities changing in my organization.  My current autonomy level is well balanced.