HN Books @HNBooksMonth

The Essential Deming[1] is probably the gold standard for now, though it can be a little dry. It's one of those "suggested readings" in basically any safety or process management higher education curricula.

Not really 100% about Deming but very relevant, I would recommend Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards" [2] as a supplement to understand some of the implications of what happens when Deming's ideas are implemented without understanding the human condition.

Otherwise, Deming wrote and published plenty of his own work that is worth reading.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Deming-Leadership-Principle...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pr...

Punished by rewards is an interesting book on the same lines.

https://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pr...

For a different view, see "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes".[1]

It's about extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the person and is what's typically used by organizations to try to motivate people: salary, praise, bonuses, etc. Intrinsic motivation comes from within.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pr...

⬐ Godel_unicode

I think this is frequently short-sighted. Surgeons are intrinsically motivated to be surgeons and help people, and they are trained to think clinically (pun somewhat intended) about risk-reward. They realize that trying to help high-risk patients will ultimately result in them being able to help fewer patients.

⬐ candiodari

Luckily in most businesses incentives are used by the people designing the incentives to

1) cost as little as possible to the business

2) "optimize" their own pay/career

(There was a study saying that over 80% of sales people would deny their employer a million-dollar contract if it netted them $500 personally, so compared to that this is nothing)

Which makes sure that the incentives are not aligned with the business goals.

Now I guarantee that the best way to destroy intrinsic motivation, bar none, is to provide extrinsic motivation for things that aren't aligned with the business' goals.

Along similar lines, see "Punished by Rewards":

https://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pr...

> I imagine there is no good, scientific method to determining how someone should be motivated that we can train teachers with.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pra...

I've been reading "Punished By Rewards" (http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pra...) and it got into a lot of that. Pop behaviorism has really deep roots on the collective American psyche.

Relevant: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618001816

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes

"The quickest way to fix the education system in this country is to basically pay kids to learn."

No, it's not.

http://www.amazon.com/Punished-Rewards-Trouble-Incentive-Pra...