When a person or organization behaves in a way that seems irrational, the mistake is usually ours: we are looking at their stated intentions instead of their actual incentives. Show me the incentive, the saying goes, and I will show you the outcome. Understanding what someone is rewarded for explains most of what they do.
People and systems drift toward what is rewarded and away from what is punished, often regardless of what anyone intended or believes. A team measured on the number of tickets closed will close tickets, even at the expense of solving problems well. This is not cynicism; it is how behavior works under pressure over time. Good intentions bend to persistent incentives, so the incentive is the better predictor.
This makes incentives a powerful lens. Confused by a behavior? Ask what the person or system is actually rewarded for, in money, status, safety, or approval, and the behavior usually stops being puzzling. It also warns you: whenever you set up a measure or a reward, you are steering behavior toward it, including in ways you did not intend. The metric you choose becomes the behavior you get.
The practical lesson is to design incentives carefully and to expect them to work, sometimes too well. Reward the real goal, not a proxy that can be gamed. And when judging others, extend the charity of assuming they are responding rationally to their incentives, which is usually truer, and more useful, than assuming they are foolish or malicious.
When behavior puzzles you, find the incentive.
Published by Greenridge Media. Views expressed are the author's own.