Black bears and brown bears both enjoy eating honey and make their living by beekeeping. Each of them has a beehive, with the same number of bees. One day, they decided to have a competition to see whose bees could produce more honey.
The black bear thought that honey production depends on the "visit count" of bees to flowers each day. So, it purchased an expensive performance management system for measuring the visit count of bees. In its view, the number of flowers touched by the bees represents their workload. After every quarter, the black bear would announce the workload of each bee; additionally, the black bear set up awards to reward the bees with the highest visit counts. However, it never told the bees that it was competing with the brown bear. It only made its bees compete on visit counts.
The brown bear thought differently from the black bear. It believed that the amount of honey produced by bees depends on how much nectar they collect daily — the more nectar, the more honey they can produce. Therefore, it straightforwardly informed all the bees: it was competing with the black bear to see who could produce more honey. It spent little money to buy a performance management system to measure the amount of nectar collected by each bee daily and the total amount of honey produced by the entire hive daily, and it published these measurement results publicly. It also established a reward system, heavily rewarding the bees that collected the most nectar in a month. If the total monthly output of the bees exceeded the previous month, all the bees received varying levels of rewards.
A year passed, and the two bears reviewed the competition results. The black bear's honey was less than half of the brown bear's.
The black bear's evaluation system was very accurate, but the performance it evaluated was not directly related to the ultimate outcome. The black bear's bees, in order to maximize their visit counts, did not collect much nectar because the more nectar they collected, the slower they flew, and the fewer visits they could make daily. Besides, the black bear originally intended to let the bees compete to gather more information. However, due to the small scope of rewards, the competition for gathering more information turned into mutual information closure. The pressure of competition among the bees was too great, so even if a bee obtained valuable information, such as the location of a large locust tree forest, it was unwilling to share this information with other bees.
On the other hand, the brown bear's bees were different. Since it did not limit rewards to just one bee, to collect more nectar, the bees cooperated with each other. Bees with sharp senses and fast flying speeds were responsible for scouting where the most and best flowers were located, then returning to inform the stronger bees to go there together to collect nectar. The remaining bees were responsible for storing the collected nectar and turning it into honey. Although the bees that collected the most nectar received the largest rewards, the other bees also gained partial benefits. Therefore, the bees were far from being in a state of everyone fending for themselves and undermining each other.
Incentives are a means; encouraging competition among employees is indeed necessary, but compared to that, stimulating the team spirit of all employees is more prominent.
Performance evaluation focuses on activities or ultimate results, which managers need to carefully consider.
Due to the differences in the conducting abilities of orchestra conductors, the orchestra will respond differently: either playing chaotically or expressing passion and talent.
-- December 4, 2008, 4:51 AM By David Chen --
Incentives are a means; encouraging competition among employees is indeed necessary, but compared to that, stimulating the team spirit of all employees is more prominent.
Performance evaluation focuses on activities or ultimate results, which managers need to carefully consider.
Due to the differences in the conducting abilities of orchestra conductors, the orchestra will respond differently: either playing chaotically or expressing passion and talent.