My brother was an all-state basketball player as a young sophomore, and pretty cocky. One day at the start of practice the coach yells out "Ok...Whoever scores the most points in practice today will start in tomorrow's game!" Seems like a pretty good incentive metric to get the boys to practice hard right? ... So my Brother stayed only on the offensive side of the court, never bothering to go and play any defense. After a few minutes of this the coach got ticked, blew his whistle and screamed at my brother "What the h*ll are you doing!" My brother simply replied back "I want to start tomorrow night coach. Scoring points will get me that right?" (The implication being that according to the metrics set up by the coach himself, defense was worthless) As in all things, there is a danger of overshooting though and throwing out all measures altogether. Finding the "correct" measure is the secret sauce of success.
When you do give a reward of some kind, make sure to link it to a specific behavior or achievement. This is different than just giving someone a perk—it is frequent, specific, and timely. It requires a manger to have a great deal of insight into what is important to an employee and how best to recognize someone. And it is not recognition for recognition’s sake. It is not saying, “Good job for showing up to work today.” Managers should link recognition to specific behaviors...