Incentives are a double edged sword

One of my friends decided to do an interesting experiment.

She was having trouble with her 9 year old son, who wasn't doing things she wanted him to do. For instance, he wasn't cleaning his room, wasn't doing his homework on time, or even helping with some house chores.

She decided to incentivise him. She made a deal with him that if she finishes his homework on time then he will get to watch 30 mns of TV. If he helps with the house chores he can gets 2 bourbon biscuits, and so on. Things started working a charm. He started doing his homework on time, his grades improved. He was even helping with select house chores.

But there was an unintended, second degree consequence. Everytime the boy was asked to do something, he would say "Mumma what will I get it I do this" and on other occasions he would say "We never agreed to this, I am not doing it".

She realised she had a problem at hand. She decided something had to be done. So she flipped the paradigm to tell educate and convince her son that not everything that's his responsibility can be written or agreed upfront. More importantly being kind, considerate and conscientious is a minimum expectation. It's not something that can be incentivised. Yes there was an incentive on cumulatively how he had been, and that they would assess every week/month together. This pivot took many weeks to make, but she eventually got there.

This isn't too different from what happens at the workplace sometimes. Incentivising the right behaviour is powerful, but sometimes if it starts to build a culture that everything must be incentivised in order to get things done, then it's time to pivot and level set.

What incentives prioritise is important, but sometimes what they unintentionally deprioritise is even more important.