FiM is NOT FIRST

[Beth Sweet]

When you're at work, how does your boss encourage certain behavior? If the known behavior to get a promotion or a bonus is to make the product the prettiest shade of green out there, will employees work to improve the product? No, they will make the product the prettiest shade of green, because that is where the benefits lie.

When you are raising a child, you praise them for the behavior that you want, and scold them for poor behavior. While they are growing, they need your praise to continue that good behavior, but when they are grown, they've learned the lesson that praise encouraged. You must provide the incentive for the action that you wish to be taken.

The same situation is here: you will get what you ask for. If FiM asks for nothing but robots, then they will get nothing but robots. Does that mean that people will work their rear ends off just for a trophy? You betcha. But as they do it, will they pick it up as a lifestyle which they will continue long after the quest for the trophy is over? Of course they will. We are human beings. We are encouraged by an end, and learn from the means.

In order to encourage the means, we must provide an end. This is not being done adequately.

Does this mean that some teams will be doing Chairman's style activities just for a trophy? I believe that if you talk to any team that has won the Chairman's award, they will likely tell you that the original reason that they started doing Chairman's actions because there was the incentive of an award, which promoted those activities.