What Are We Incenting?
There was an interesting interview this week on NPR's Morning Edition with a former assistant secretary of education, Diane Ravitch. Ravitch was a vocal supporter of the No Child Left Behind program that put performance standards in place for school districts across the country. Based on her research and observation over the past several years, she now opposes the policy and has written a book called The Death and Life of the Great American School System
One of the things that intrigued me about the interview was Ravitch's take on why she thinks the program has failed. She says it's the combination of measurement and punishment. Of the two, she has no problem with measurement. In fact, she supports it. Her point is that when there is punishment like job loss or school closures associated with the measurement, the players in the system are incented to game the system. According to Ravitch's analysis, the effect of this in No Child has been for some school systems to dumb down their student testing or to adjust the scoring scale so it looks like their results are better than they actually are.
Her other point is that the measurement and punishment approach encourages competition between systems rather than collaboration and sharing of best practices.
The interview got me thinking about the misuse and misunderstanding of incentives in other domains such as managing organizations. A few weeks ago, I posted a short video on Dan Pink's new book, Drive
It makes me wonder, though, what would happen in organizations if there was a serious, fresh look at how we incent performance? What are your thoughts and experience on what incents people to perform at their best?
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Executive coach Scott Eblin’s goal is to help you succeed at the next level of leadership. Throughout the week, he’ll offer his take on the leadership lessons in the news and his advice on your most pressing leadership questions. A former government executive, Scott is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.
When did "incent" become a verb?
Brad Crawford Posted Monday, March 8, 2010 12:22 PMWhen it comes to NCLB and other attempts to punish by metrics (think NSPS), all I can I say is a great big DUH. As a managment coach, perhaps you should look into why supposedly intelligent senior leaders consistently go down the wrong path when everyone in the trenches is screaming STOP to them.
Just a second comment as well. The carrot and stick is not about reward and punishment. Everyone thinks the stick is for beating you into submission. In reality the "carrot and stick" was used to LEAD the horse. The stick held the carrot in front of the horse, but just out of reach so he'd keep walking toward the carrot. At the end of the day he get's the carrot and a good rub down so the horse feels good. The carrot and stick is all about incentives, not about punishment.
bmj Posted Monday, March 8, 2010 11:50 PMTo answer the second comment, since business began dominating language, English and it proper usage has diminished. Uptick rather than increase, and we accept this and other cliques unchecked daily. Business models are fine for business, but they are anathema for education and government. They serve different purposes. The government began its lengthy slide during the last administration and the push for pay-for-performance accellerated that descent.
Angry Vet Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2010 9:10 AM