Re: Recognizing employees

You are missing a basic point.  Schemes laid on workers to "motivate"
them, to force them to produce more, to bribe or threaten them to do
better work never aids intrinsic motivation.  These schemes reduce the
workers' inherent need to do good work.  Further, these schemes make
the workers care less about the company.  They may care more about
chasing the rewards, but they care less about the company.

Another of your basic errors is the assumption that compensation is
only extrinsic motivation.  Of course most of us would not work for
free.  That we are compensated is normal.  Adequate compensation is a
neutral thing.  It can be used (abused?) as an extrinsic tool, and
WILL cause damage.  Pay-for-performance schemes pit workers against
one another, and causes the work force to focus on the scheme rather
than the work.

Your suggestion of a blend shows you still don't get it.  Here are a
couple of illustrations of this point.

A father spends a lot of quality time with his kids.  He shows a great
role model -- energetic, courteous, gentle, hard-working, loving,
responsible, considerate, trusting.  Then one day he gets fed up with
the way one kid is nasty to the other, even after repeated
"consultations" with Dad, and the father back-hands him, knocking him
down, teaching him a lesson, making sure the kids understand about not
sparing the rod.  What lesson have the kids just learned?  What about
all this courteous, considerate, gentle, loving bull***t?

Maybe a more relevant example.  A manager spends a lot of time trying
to develop good communication laterally and vertically in his
organization.  He encourages honest feedback.  He gives and receives
it well.  Things are gradually starting to improve.  He is learning
more about how his operation works than ever before.  To add to the
improvement, he installs a Friday afternoon meeting where all the shop
managers get together and present informational items where the boss
rates them, and gives out points on how important they are, how much
improvement it shows, and valuable it is that problem info is brought
up in a timely manner to be nipped in the bud, so to speak.  The
points will decide who gets what bonuses, trips, badges, etc.  All of
a sudden, the picture changes.  After a few weeks he realizes that
what he is hearing bears little resemblance to what is actually
happpening.  He no longer hears of problems.  Everyone's project is
reported in glowing terms.  He has a special meeting where he decrees
that everyone must give him the real info.  Nothing changes.  He has
another meeting where he chastises a guy who obviously sugar-coated
his reports to get points.  He makes it known that it will reflect in
the new performance appraisal system he is working on.  Now the info
the boss gets bears absolutely no semblance to reality.

Extrinsic destroys instrinsic.