This is exactly what I was getting at in my basketball & wisdom post:
Everyone should watch this, then go out and act on it — then watch it again, then keep doing the right thing…
There’s nobody who hasn’t thought ill of bureaucratic limitations and the pernicious mediocrity they create, but how many people make a sustained and disciplined effort to do something about it?
There’s also a good interview with Barry Schwartz on the Wired Epicenter blog:
I’m not talking about getting rid of incentives; people have to make a living. But people need to understand that rules and incentives aren’t enough…. The more rules and incentives you have, the less wisdom you will have. There needs to be room left on the one hand to nurture in people the desire to do the right thing and on the other hand to give them the tools so that they’ll know what the right thing is. This incredible pressure to increase payoffs is an obstacle to doing the right thing. You will never be able to create a system of incentives that rewards people for doing the right thing. The system of incentives may start out that way, but very quickly clever people will find ways to … game it.
Schwartz is increasingly becoming one of my favourite semi-pop intellectuals. (In fact I linked to Schwartz’s previous TED appearance in a similar-minded post.) I’m absolutely in love with this line of thinking — and the hope of seeing it through towards real action.
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