Using incentives

- Once you've defined what people are accountable for,…you need to drive their behaviors.…Incentives are a very powerful way for doing so.…Leaders can create incentives…for people who over-deliver on their accountabilities,…things like Bonuses or Promotions.…You can also use Punishment or disincentives…when people fail to live up to those accountabilities.…Allow me to offer an example.…When I was part of an operating division…of a large corporation,…we knew very clearly what we were accountable for.…

We had revenue targets and customer-count targets.…One year we missed our numbers, and we didn't get a bonus.…It was extremely frustrating.…Now we knew exactly why,…we knew what the metric was, and we fell short.…But it was really difficult…watching our colleagues in other divisions…get big bonuses that year, because they met expectations.…Now the next year, again,…we knew what we were accountable for,…the numbers were clearly spelled out,…and we exceeded our numbers and got a huge bonus that year.…

So the incentives worked,…