What’s Neuroplasticity?

Remember the old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?  Well that may be true for dogs but guess what?  It is not true for us humans.  Recent research has found that we can indeed learn new ways to do things and that what once thought to be “hard wired” is not really true.  Our human brains allow us to continue to process new information in new ways and some portions of our brains actually compensate for other areas.  What researchers have found is that our brains are actually more elastic (hence the neuro-plasticity) and we can change how we do things.  Dr. Bruce Lipton has studied both quantum physics and cell biology and his research shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead, DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts (The Biology of Belief, Hay House, May, 2005).

So what does this mean and how does this apply to incentives and motivation?  What this means to us is that if we can break the paradigms that hold us back, we can change.  The conventional thinking was that you couldn’t change because “it’s just the way you are.”  But the science doesn’t support that.  Incentives could be used to reward people for stepping outside of their comfort zone and try something new.  The new behavior is learned from the positive thoughts emanating from outside of our cells.  It is also important not to create a program that could have negative consequences because the same learned behavior is possible only this time, in a negative way.  It’s why some programs that are ill conceived, result in a far worse effect than if the program had not been run at all.

Performance improvement programs are becoming more scientific and require more attention to the science, not just giving some people some prizes.  The more we learn about human behavior, the more important these programs will become.

Cash is King

Whenever you question employees or salespeople or distributors about what the most appealing incentive is to them, the answer is always cash.  In reality, cash is a poor motivator so save your research time and effort because the results are always the same.  By why not use cash?  It’s easy.  Participants can get whatever they want.  I don’t have to do anything different to hand out cash.  Cash incentives do have a place and a purpose.  If you consider all of the promotional efforts used to create a purchase of a product, cash is used quite often and for good reason.  Cash is best used when it is used as a replacement for a normal expenditure.  If you were going to purchase an item and there was a coupon offered for purchase of that item, that’s a cash incentive.  Sale items, bundling, couponing and rebates are all cash incentives.  You were going to spend your cash for the purchase and you saved your cash or were reimbursed.  Cash was replaced. 

Where is gets confusing is when cash is used as a reward for performance, not purchases.  Now it has crossed the line from everyday living expenses to achievement and relegated that achievement to a payment for services.  Non-cash awards have a staying power that the industry refers to as “trophy value.”  You’ll remember that trophy for years after the actual performance but you won’t remember what you spent the cash on.  There have been numerous studies on the use of cash and non-cash incentives (see The Benefits of Tangible Non-Monetary Incentives from the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement at http://www.performanceforum.org/) and while cash is always requested, it underperforms other awards in cost and longevity.

When you are designing your incentive program, start by asking yourself what the participant is being asked to do.  If they are giving up earnings to purchase an item, then some form of cash incentive is best.  If they are being asked to increase their performance, to do something extra, above and beyond, then a non-cash incentive is best.  Easy to administer is not always the best solution and could be more costly in the long run.