Some good examples on the often counter-intuitive nature of management and incentives. - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

I think traditional management techniques mostly just create disincentives, sometimes intentionally but often unintentionally. - Paul Buchheit

This is great. I want to learn more about this- especially now that I have a daughter. The talk reminds me that I wanted to read that book by Alfie Kohn (Punished By Rewards...) - metalerik

Alfie Kohn has another great book called Unconditional Parenting. Actually, I enjoyed watching a DVD of him lecturing on that topic even more than the book. It's all great in theory, but it is interesting actually parenting and realizing how often you reach for metaphorical carrots and sticks. - Laura Norvig

Thanks Laura, I just ordered the book. - Paul Buchheit

LauraN, I was lucky to catch him speak in San Francisco about 18 months ago. I'm with you on theory vs practice- yikes. Still cool to keep working on it though! - metalerik

I have had success holding his theories (which are quite well supported by research) in the back of my mind, but for concrete ideas of how to put that into practice, I turn to the Positive Discipline books by Jane Nelsen. She also had a cool podcast for awhile that is still available here http://www.positivediscipline.com/podcast... It is pretty amazing when you stop trying to "make" your kid do something and concentrate on working together to solve problems. It does work sometimes and certainly empowers both them and you. You have to combine that with understanding what they are capable of at their age. - Laura Norvig

This TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks... is also about the ineffectiveness of incentives. It's premise is that people want to be virtuous and do right by others. - Laura Norvig

At one point in the Barry Schwartz video he talks about "moral heroes." My brother Peter is actually my moral hero. He's freakishly moral. - Laura Norvig

Bump because this is really important for people to understand. Waving money is not the answer - people *want* to do a good job, we are programmed to want to solve puzzles, make connections, take the next step but the way businesses are organised actively hampers these natural traits. It has implications for EVERYTHING we do at home and at work, as individuals and as communities. - WoH: Minding her Botts

my idealistic side says we can blame capitalism for this whole mess. money confuses life. - Laura Norvig

Laura: capitalism may not be the best, but so far it's the only thing that scales. - Gabe

@gabe you mean "scales" in case of american capitalism in beginning of XXI century? :) - A. T.

By "scales", I mean it works for populations of tens of millions of people without rampant poverty or starvation. For instance, communism works fine, but doesn't scale well to thousands of people, let alone millions. - Gabe