How do we get people to do more of the thing we want? Adele James explores how to incentivise the right actions through the lens of behavioural science.
As a marketing industry, we should be pretty good at changing behaviours. We’re not only part of the persuasion game, we also pride ourselves on understanding those nudges that can affect how people behave. We’re experts in carrots and sticks.
It’s a truth I’m reminded of when I’m working on an insight project on root vegetables for one of the big grocers. We are literally searching for the behavioural carrot to sell more carrots, considering financial incentives (“20% off”), moral incentives (“buy British carrots and support British farming”) and coercive incentives (the implied stick – “eat more carrots to stay healthy”).
Compliance vs commitment
But there are also behaviours we need to optimise closer to home. Like most creative agencies, we’re a timesheet business. And, as in many creative cultures, prioritising process isn’t always top of mind, so getting colleagues to complete timesheets promptly is a constant struggle.
Behavioural science tells us why. For the business, timesheets support many processes, such as project costing, billing and resource planning. All very laudable and nice, but quite distant for a creative individual’s day-to-day. For them, the incentive is simpler: avoid being chased. The behaviour is driven less by the value of completing a timesheet than by the inconvenience of not completing one.
Using the stick can create compliance, but it’s not commitment. People may complete a timesheet because the friction of not doing it is greater than the friction of doing it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they understand or care about why it matters. And as if the reminders, chasing or consequences disappear, so may the behaviour.
We optimise for what we are measured on
Incentives don’t just influence whether a given behaviour happens, as with timesheets. They also influence how people choose to achieve that behaviour. And incentives implicitly teach us what matters to the system. For example, a 1965 Time article1 described President Khrushchev’s complaint about a Moscow chandelier factory where workers’ bonuses increased with the tonnage produced.
The response was entirely rational: produce heavier chandeliers by adding in concrete and extra metals. Technically the measure was achieved, but the result meant presumably many ceilings and floors were ruined as the too-heavy chandeliers crashed down.
Modern business versions are less dramatic, but the principle is the same.
Quick service restaurants need to serve food at the pace and convenience that customers expect. But rewarding speed and speed alone can mean that elements like service accuracy are affected. It is so frustrating to open your bag of fries to discover your garlic dips are missing. Similarly, reward billable hours in a creative agency and people may protect chargeable time at the expense of training or collaboration. We need both.
1https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,840532-4,00.html
