On The Folly Of Rewarding A While Hoping For B

On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B describes one of the most common failures in leadership, education, management, parenting, and public policy: rewarding one behavior while secretly hoping people will choose another. When incentives, praise, bonuses, grades, or punishments are misaligned with real goals, people naturally respond to what is rewarded—not what leaders claim to value. This mismatch creates frustration, dishonesty, low morale, and poor long-term results. Understanding this principle helps individuals and organizations design better systems that encourage the behavior they truly want to see.

Introduction: Why Incentives Matter

People are not machines. If a school says it values creativity but grades only memorization, students will learn to memorize. They notice what gets praised, promoted, measured, funded, or ignored. If a company says it values teamwork but promotes only the highest individual salesperson, employees will compete rather than collaborate. If a government says it values public safety but rewards police departments mainly for high arrest numbers, enforcement may become more aggressive even when trust and prevention suffer.

This is the heart of On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B. Also, often, they are simply responding rationally to the system around them. Day to day, the phrase points to a gap between stated values and actual rewards. The problem is not usually that people are lazy, selfish, or dishonest. When the system rewards the wrong thing, even intelligent and well-meaning people may produce harmful outcomes And it works..

You'll probably want to bookmark this section Easy to understand, harder to ignore..

The Core Idea Behind the Concept

The concept became widely known through Steven Kerr’s classic essay, On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B. Kerr argued that organizations often design reward systems that unintentionally encourage the opposite of their intended goals. The issue appears in businesses, schools, sports, politics, families, and even personal habits.

For example:

• A manager hopes for innovation but punishes failure harshly.
• A teacher hopes for deep learning but rewards only test scores.
• A parent hopes for honesty but reacts angrily every time a child tells the truth about a mistake.
• A company hopes for customer satisfaction but rewards employees for short call times.
• A hospital hopes for patient care quality but rewards doctors for seeing more patients in less time.

In each case, the organization says it wants B, but it rewards A. Over time, people adapt to the reward structure. Now, they may not even realize they are abandoning the real goal. They simply learn what works And that's really what it comes down to..

Why People Follow Rewards

Human behavior is strongly shaped by consequences. If a behavior brings recognition, money, status, safety, or approval, people are more likely to repeat it. If a behavior leads to punishment, embarrassment, or loss, people avoid it. In practice, this does not mean people lack values. It means that systems communicate priorities more clearly than slogans do The details matter here..

In organizations, this is often called the principal-agent problem. The “principal” wants a certain outcome, while the “agent” is responsible for achieving it. If the agent’s incentives do not match the principal’s goals, the agent may act in ways that benefit themselves while harming the larger mission Which is the point..

Real talk — this step gets skipped all the time It's one of those things that adds up..

Another related idea is Goodhart’s Law, which is often summarized as: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Take this case: if customer service quality is measured only by average call length, employees may rush customers off the phone. The number improves, but the actual service gets worse.

Quick note before moving on Simple, but easy to overlook..

Common Examples of Rewarding A While Hoping for B

1. Workplaces That Want Teamwork but Reward Competition

Many companies say they value collaboration, yet their bonus systems reward only individual performance. Employees quickly understand the real message: help others only if it does not threaten your own ranking Simple, but easy to overlook..

This creates hidden competition. People may withhold information, avoid mentoring colleagues, or take credit for shared work. Even if the company culture poster says “teamwork,” the compensation system says “win individually Not complicated — just consistent..

A better approach is to combine individual accountability with team-based rewards. Employees should be recognized not only for personal results but also for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and helping the organization succeed as a whole Less friction, more output..

2. Schools That Want Learning but Reward Test Scores

Schools often claim to value curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, and lifelong learning. Even so, if teachers and students are judged mainly by standardized test results, the system pushes them toward test preparation.

Students may learn how to pass exams without understanding the subject deeply. Teachers may feel forced to narrow the curriculum. Subjects like art, music, discussion, project-based learning, and emotional development may receive less attention because they are harder to measure.

This does not mean assessment is bad. Assessment is necessary. Think about it: the problem appears when one narrow measure becomes the dominant reward. A healthier system balances exams with projects, portfolios, class participation, problem-solving tasks, and teacher judgment.

3. Healthcare Systems That Want Care but Reward Speed

In healthcare, the desired outcome is patient well-being. But if doctors, clinics, or hospitals are rewarded mainly for the number of patients seen, procedures performed, or costs reduced, care can become rushed.

Patients may feel like numbers. Doctors may feel pressured to prioritize efficiency over listening. Important warning signs can be missed when appointments are too short. Even if everyone involved has good intentions, the reward system can push behavior toward volume rather than quality Took long enough..

Better healthcare incentives include patient outcomes, follow-up success, preventive care, patient satisfaction, and accurate diagnosis—not just speed or quantity.

4. Parents Who Want Honesty but Reward Fear

Parents often want their children to be honest, responsible, and open about mistakes. Yet when a child admits wrongdoing and receives an extreme punishment, the child may learn that honesty is dangerous.

Here's one way to look at it: if a teenager breaks something, lies about it, and is punished lightly after the truth comes out, lying may seem safer than honesty. The parent hoped for honesty but rewarded concealment That alone is useful..

This does not

because the child’s fear of harsh consequences outweighs the desire for truth‑telling. Over time, the child internalizes the lesson that “the safest route is to hide the problem,” which directly contradicts the parent’s stated goal of fostering integrity Most people skip this — try not to..

How to Align Incentives with Desired Outcomes

Identifying the gap between what we say we want and what we actually reward is the first step. The next step is to redesign incentive structures so that they reinforce, rather than sabotage, the intended objectives. Below are practical strategies that can be applied across the different contexts discussed And that's really what it comes down to..

1. Make the Reward System Transparent and Multi‑Dimensional

• Define Clear Metrics: Instead of a single KPI (e.g., “sales numbers”), create a balanced scorecard that includes collaboration, knowledge sharing, and customer satisfaction.
• Weight the Metrics: Assign a meaningful proportion of the total bonus or evaluation to each dimension. To give you an idea, 40 % individual performance, 30 % team outcomes, and 30 % peer‑review scores.
• Communicate Regularly: Ensure everyone understands how each behavior contributes to the overall score. Transparency reduces speculation and the temptation to game the system.

2. Incorporate “Process” Rewards Alongside “Outcome” Rewards

• Recognize Good Practices: Celebrate teachers who design interdisciplinary projects, even if test scores are modest. Offer micro‑grants for innovative lesson plans.
• Use Narrative Evaluations: Allow qualitative feedback—such as student reflections or peer observations—to count toward performance reviews.
• Create “Learning Portfolios”: Students can compile work that demonstrates growth over time, which is assessed in addition to exam results.

3. Shift From Volume to Value in Healthcare

• Outcome‑Based Payments: Reimburse providers based on patient recovery rates, readmission avoidance, and long‑term health improvements rather than the number of visits.
• Patient‑Reported Experience Measures (PREMs): Include patient satisfaction and perceived quality of communication as part of physician performance metrics.
• Team Incentives: Reward whole care teams (doctors, nurses, admin staff) for achieving holistic goals, encouraging collaboration rather than competition for patient slots.

4. grow a Safe Space for Honesty at Home

• Proportional Responses: Align consequences with the severity of the misstep, and separate the act from the admission. A child who confesses should receive a lighter consequence than one who hides the truth.
• Positive Reinforcement: Praise and acknowledge honesty explicitly (“I’m proud you told me the truth”). This builds a positive association with being truthful.
• Model Vulnerability: Parents who admit their own mistakes create a culture where error is a learning opportunity, not a trigger for punitive action.

5. Use “Feedback Loops” to Continuously Refine Incentives

• Collect Data: Track both intended outcomes (e.g., patient health, student creativity) and unintended side effects (e.g., burnout, cheating).
• Iterate Quickly: If a metric is causing perverse behavior, adjust its weight or replace it within a short cycle.
• Engage Stakeholders: Involve employees, teachers, clinicians, or family members in the redesign process. When people help shape the rules, they’re more likely to buy into them.

The Bigger Picture: Culture Meets Structure

Incentives are not a silver bullet; they operate within the broader cultural context of an organization or family. A culture that genuinely values collaboration, curiosity, compassion, or honesty will naturally reinforce those values, even if the formal reward system is imperfect. Conversely, a toxic culture can undermine even the most thoughtfully crafted incentives.

Key cultural levers include:

When culture and structure are in sync, the hidden competition described at the start evaporates. People no longer have to choose between “what I’m told to do” and “what I’m paid for”—the two become one Still holds up..

Conclusion

The paradox of “wanting X but rewarding Y” is a universal human‑systems problem. Whether in the boardroom, the classroom, the clinic, or the family kitchen, misaligned incentives create hidden forces that steer behavior away from stated goals. The remedy is not merely to add more rules or more bonuses, but to design a coherent ecosystem where metrics, rewards, and cultural signals all point toward the same outcomes.

It sounds simple, but the gap is usually here Worth keeping that in mind..

By:

1. Making incentives transparent and multi‑dimensional,
2. Balancing outcome and process rewards,
3. Prioritizing value over volume,
4. Creating safe spaces for honesty, and
5. Embedding continuous feedback loops,

organizations and families can close the gap between intention and action. The result is a healthier, more motivated, and ultimately more successful environment—one where people pursue the goals they claim to value because the system actually supports them.