Charles Green, author of the Trusted Advisor blog had a great post earlier this week on trust and the perils associated with our attempts to drive, manage and measure what are essentially virtues -- trust, ethics, integrity, to name a few -- as though they were like any other business outcome. Green's post and the survey that he references are worth reading and reflecting on for all reward professionals. I particularly appreciate his closing quote:
The risk of measuring humanness is that you destroy the thing you're measuring.
As I mentioned in my comment to the post, we (in the reward profession) often find ourselves walking a fine line between motivating and reinforcing desired behaviors and taking steps that risk destroying (or at least seriously perverting) the things we mean to encourage and celebrate.
(See also recent post on paying for ethics for related discussion.)
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