Positioning Systems Blog

Just finished reading Aubrey Daniels’ blog How The Mighty Fall. It has nothing to do with Jim Collins book by the same name, however it might give you pause the next time you feel a sports team is running up the score on an opponent.

 

Aubrey’s point is whether giving less than your best if ever a good idea. He points to several examples of companies that have fallen into a trap of coasting, or once great company’s having realized the small margin for error that exists once they reach the top. Toyota’s recent problem is a good example. 

 

Daniels also presents some interesting about Daniel Pink’s new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and what he calls Motivation 3.0. You can read about Aubrey’s views on this at DRiVE” Me Crazy! In case you are wondering who Daniel Pink is, he’s the person who contends that incentives don’t work in the creative environment and today’s knowledge workers need a new set of motivational methods. Pink’s evidence for his theories appear on youtube.com at Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation. 

 

Daniel Pink’s arguments and evidence sure seem conclusive. If you become familiar with Daniels’ insights and read his blogs I believe you will discover that Pink is slightly off base. The problem Daniels points out is that no matter when in history we look at human behavior whenever you positively reward it, an increase results. The problem for most rewards is we can reward for the opposite of what we want produced by failing to catch the person doing what we want to increase.

 

If you’d like more information on positive reinforcement please check out my blogs [PIC – Positive Immediate Consequence – Aubrey Daniels – Dallas Growth Summit] on Aubrey Daniels from Fortune Small Business Growth Summit.

A recent article on Why CEO’s are bad at Strategy plus a comment on goals reinforced the value of strategic discipline and why so few companies and people achieve greatness. I’ll discuss that in my next blog. 

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