The title of Daniel Pink’s TED talk is “Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation” and it caught my eye as we look at how to change our meetings and events.
So often we create incentives with rewards – or as Dan Pink calls it – the carrot and stick or the if/then rewards. If you do this, you will get that. Recently at a tradeshow I walked around and got my passport stamped and then I was rewarded with the possibility of winning sunglasses.
However, the science shows that the way we do business is wrong. Other than rudimentary tasks – performance declines with incentives. My tradeshow experience was a rudimentary task so it did work in that instance (although I don’t think they had the participation they were looking for). But what about a company that offers trips as incentives? What about those sales teams that are rewarded with great prizes?
The science shows that people work better when given autonomy, mastery and purpose (according to Dan Pink). People given the freedom to work creatively, on their own and for their own good purposes will achieve greater things.
Imagine what would happen if rather than creating a great trip for the best salespeople you created an event with ALL the salespeople and let them be creative at whatever they liked and let them share the information.
Imagine what would happen!
Imagine what else we could do. If the tradeshow format encouraged participants to be creative and to find their own purpose to visiting the booths. Could that work?
As meeting and event planners we need to continue to look at new ways to do things. I don’t have all the answers but I’m willing to keep looking for them. Just like incentives – if what we are doing is not working, we need to look at what will work.
