THE AIM for today’s newsletter is inspired by a post I came across on the r/confession subreddit, a place where people go to anonymously confess their “sins” to ~2.9M weekly visitors and suffer their judgements. I was intringued by the title: She didn’t get all A’s, but I made her ‘win’ the scooter anyway — obviously we have a story about misunderstanding variation and extrinsic motivation wrapped in a heartwarming tale about parenting, and a teachable moment.
Let’s dive in…
Background
The post is as-advertised: parent wants child to do well in school, so they offer an inducement, an electric scooter that the kid has always wanted, in exchange for As on the report card. The child, motivated by the prospect of getting a scooter, does indeed buckle-down and puts forth her best efforts in school.
Unfortunately, despite best efforts, the child only earned one A. During her performance appraisal, the parent delivered bad news that she did not meet expectations, and imparted an important life lesson:
I told her she did a good job and I was proud of her effort, but that she didn’t quite meet the promise we had made. She was clearly disappointed and frustrated, I it was all over her face.
The parent, however, did not want to break the illusion that the girl’s earning of grades was directly tied to her performance, nor the power of extrinsic motivation. So, they devised a cunning plan:
So, I decided to do something a little fun. I handed her a soda with a promo on it and told her to try her luck entering a prize draw. Meanwhile, I went to ahead and bought the scooter anyway and arranged for someone else to deliver it to her. She went to pick it up thinking she’d actually won it from the contest. She was so excited and truly believed she’d earned it that way. And honestly, in my heart, I felt she had earned it with all the effort. Now, I’ve promised her a vacation if she hits the mark next time. I'm really hoping she nails it.
Never have I seen a core tenet of modern management so succinctly demonstrated as in this confession, which effectively supports Chapman’s Law of Performance Appraisals: It was never about your performance in the first place.
On one hand, they want to convince the child of the merits of hard work, and on the other that their desires come not from effort but random chance. In a way, I’m impressed: they managed to actually teach the child an important lesson about how the prevailing style of management works, at the expense of their future ability to find joy and purpose in their work.
Deming’s View
Dr. Deming had a dim view of how grades and grading were robbing kids of their self-esteem and setting them up for a lifetime of disappointments. In The New Economics he writes:
Further remarks on rewards. When children are given rewards such as toys and money for doing well in school, music, and sports, they learn to expect rewards for good performance. As they become adults, their desire for tangible reward begins to govern action. They are now extrinsically motivated. They come to rely on the world to provide things to make them feel good. They will often work hard to earn lots of money, only to find in middle age that their work has no meaning. Anyone that derives meaning from extrinsic sources of motivation brings detrimental effects on his self-esteem. esteem. He feels that he has no control over the world. He is powerless, and may become despondent.
The loving mother, the kind teacher, the patient coach, can through praise, respect, and support for improvement, reenforce a child's dignity and self-esteem. Children feel good about themselves when they learn how to master a new activity. They become more intrinsically motivated. They develop self-esteem and confidence. They develop self-efficacy. Their work is meaningful, and they will make improvements in what they do.
W. Edwards Deming. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (Kindle Locations 885-892). Kindle Edition.
Further, based on what he was seeing happening in American workplaces, he traced much of the dysfunction back to the the way we’re habituating people towards grades and grading, not only for pupils but teachers:
A remark on education. There is deep concern in the United States today about education. No notable improvement will come until our schools:
• Abolish grades (A, B, C. D) in school, from toddlers on up through the university. When graded, pupils put emphasis on the grade, not on learning. Cooperation on a project in school may he considered cheating (W. W. Scherkenbach. The Deming Route, p. 128). The greatest evil from grades is forced ranking-only (e.g.) 20 per cent of pupils may receive A. Ridiculous. There is no shortage of good pupils.
• Abolish merit ratings for teachers.
• Abolish comparison of schools on the basis of scores.
• Abolish gold stars for athletics or for best costume.
W. Edwards Deming. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (Kindle Locations 1117-1121). Kindle Edition.
For Dr. Deming, all of this distracted from a school’s true AIM: to encourage and facilitate joy in learning, because once this is instilled, the individual can overcome many of the challenges life will throw in their way:
Joy in learning comes not so much from what is learned, but from learning.
Joy on the job comes not so much from the result, the product, but from contribution to optimization of the system tem in which everybody wins.
W. Edwards Deming. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (Kindle Locations 1124-1125). Kindle Edition.
To him, this was the antidote to the forces of destruction of the individual: get it where it begins.
Rx: Teach Joy in Learning at Home
For many parents, education is delegated to the local school system with scant thought given to what the kids are learning beyond the lessons in the textbook. With my own son, now in his senior year in high school, I’ve continually reinforced the ethos that his education is his own responsibility, and not to rely on the teachers to induce his learning. I’ve encouraged him to learn what excites him, and he has found a lot of joy in studying religion, philosophy, and history. He already has read more than I ever did in four years of an undergraduate degree in political science!
At the same time, we’ve reinforced in him how to not stress out about grades because they are not a true reflection of his effort nor desire to learn. We know he tried exceptionally hard to get good grades in physics last year, but he had a hard teacher who did little to help students appreciate the joy of learning. We had to hire a tutor to help fill the gaps that the teacher left — as many parents do.
Moreover, we’ve never dangled inducements in front of him because we know that once they are removed, then his self-esteem would be destroyed and he’d give up on future challenges. There is much more to be gained from accomplishing something difficult because you want to master it, rather than doing it for a reward.
Concluding Thoughts…
Consider our hapless parent who decided the best way to encourage their child to do better in school wasn’t to address their challenges, but to dangle an electric scooter in front of them, and how, despite best efforts, the child failed to meet expectations, but nonethless got the scooter as a random reward.
How does this resonate with what you see in your organization right now, or from your own past experiences? What was the effect on you or your colleagues?
What examples do you teach your kids right now about grades, grading, and extrinsic motivation? Have you succumbed to using rewards? What was the effect? Are you still having to use them today? What could you do instead?
As always, let me know in the comments below!
Such a fantastic post Chris. I don’t even have children, but I still found the post insightful and very true to life.