Moving from IF-THEN to NOW-THAT rewards

Motivation 2.0 a term coined by Daniel Pink in his book Drive explains the rationale behind the huge success of Carrot and Stick based motivation for doing routine bound mundane work in the age of Industrial Revolution.

Carrot and Stick motivation is another name for IF-THEN rewards where rewards are provided as a bait to produce expected routine bound behavior.

In the modern age of the knowledge worker where there is a lot of emphasis on innovation and creativity IF-THEN awards can absolutely demotivate the knowledge worker and produce detrimental results.

Daniel Pink goes a step further and says that if at all rewards have to be given to stimulate expected innovative and creative behavior the IF-THEN rewards should in turn be changed to NOW-THEN rewards.

Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive