In the 1880s, India was still a British colony. India's snake charmers are world-famous, and there are also a large number of cobras in India. Cobras, which are common to the Indian people, caused trouble to the British colonists, and snake bites often occurred.
Therefore, in order to reduce the number of cobras in Delhi, India, the British government stipulated that people who kill cobras can receive bounties. This seems to be a good way to effectively motivate local people to eliminate cobras. However, what is puzzling is that the number of cobras has not decreased, but has increased.
Why is the British government’s incentive system counterproductive? Let me give you a hint here, let us start with Laozi’s Tao Te Ching.
Lao Tzu once said in the Tao Te Ching:
What this passage says is that if value is used as the criterion for distinguishing things, then because people like high value and hate value Low value, therefore, low value will pass it off as high value, and high value will discriminate against low value.
For example, people are divided into gentlemen and villains based on their morality. Gentlemen are praised, while villains are despised. No one likes to be spurned, so many villains will pretend to be gentlemen. Since then, there have been many hypocrites in the world.
For another example, products are divided into brands. Famous brand products sell well, while off-brand products sell poorly. Therefore, copycat products were born.
The reason is actually very simple, because people seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and will quickly change their behavior based on incentives to ensure the maximization of benefits.
Google initially had a good incentive mechanism for employees to invent patents, but later in order to save money, it significantly reduced the rewards for employees to apply for patents. The leadership believes that they continue to promote the importance of patents to employees and believe that employees will not stop applying for patents just because they lose a bonus of 1,000 yuan.
The consequence of this is that the number of patent applications per person at Google has dropped sharply. Later, Google changed its policy and granted a $10,000 bonus for applying for a patent. Soon Google entered the top 10 of the patent list.
As can be seen from the above examples, it is human nature to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. Therefore, in order to mobilize people's enthusiasm, motivation is a good choice.
However, people often respond to the incentive itself rather than to the purpose behind the incentive. So, you probably already know why there are more and more cobras in India after the British government issued a snake hunting order, right?
That’s right, because the locals discovered that cobras could be exchanged for bonuses, they began to raise cobras in captivity. Later, the British government had no choice but to cancel the bounty.
Such a case has also occurred in China. In 19th-century China, in order to protect dinosaur fossils, the government gave certain rewards to villagers who turned in fossils to the government. As a result, the government discovered that the fossils it received were all broken. It turned out that in order to get more rewards, the villagers crushed the originally complete fossils and then turned them over.
A good incentive system connects purpose and motivation.
Puffer fish is delicious, but it is highly poisonous. The amount of poison in the liver of just one tiger puffer fish can kill 32 people. The ancients were greedy and wanted to eat puffer fish. In addition to using various methods to remove toxic substances, they would also prohibit the youngest children from eating it. Why? This was a little incense left deliberately to prevent the whole family from being poisoned.
The Japanese love to eat pufferfish, and their cooking techniques and safety measures are also at the forefront of the world. Each pufferfish master must undergo strict training. After at least one year of training, they can only hold a certificate after passing the exam. On duty. Of course, the salary of puffer fish masters is also extremely high, and the process of cooking pufferfish is also extremely strict. Just the processing and detoxification process requires at least 30 processes.
Compared with the rigorous training process, the exam is much simpler: as long as you dare to eat the puffer fish you cooked, you will pass the exam. In fact, every time they take the exam, at least one-third of the candidates give up on trying the pufferfish they made by themselves. There is an unwritten rule when eating puffer fish in a restaurant, that is, after the chef serves puffer fish, you must actually eat a piece yourself.
For chefs, generous remuneration is naturally a good incentive.
The chef must first taste the pufferfish he cooked, which is connected with the purpose of "making safe pufferfish."
Therefore, a good incentive mechanism is to connect the interests of both parties, such as the interests of chefs and the interests of customers. In this regard, the U.S. military has set a good example.
In the middle of World War II, the U.S. Air Force’s parachute pass rate was 99.9%, which meant that one in every 1,000 paratroopers would die. Therefore, the military requires manufacturers to achieve a 100% pass rate.
However, manufacturers believe that this requirement is too stringent and cannot be met. As a result, the U.S. military changed its method of checking the quality of parachutes and decided to let the person in charge of the manufacturer use the parachute himself to check its quality. In the end, the pass rate of the parachute reached 100%.
It is human nature to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and it is deeply rooted in our genes. It is very difficult to change human nature, but after understanding human nature, formulating a system that is consistent with human nature, and linking purposes and incentives, you can achieve real success.
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I am Jiang Hao, an engineering man who loves reading, thinking and practicing. This is where I think.