"People Aren't Motivated by Insults"

"People aren’t motivated by insults. Criticizing someone feels good, but it isn’t likely to result in a behavior change. This is why companies selling weight loss products don’t go around pointing fingers, “Hey, you there. You really do look fat. Put the donut down now.” It is also why people in the fashion industry focus on the great new look, not making fun of people wearing the old style.

So I’m not sure why President Obama has decided the best way to deal with the oil spill is to attack BP. This week he said something like this: “You folks at BP are either totally incompetent or criminals. You deserve to be punished, and I am personally going to lock you away for a long time. And Tony, Mr. CEO, you are the worst of the bunch. You have a bad haircut, too.”

This approach might be right if the problem was fixed and the only issues were working through the cleanup and determining the liability. But that is not the situation at all; the leak continues with no end in sight.

It appears that the people who will fix this leak all work for BP, which means we need the BP team to do great work. Declaring them incompetent and lazy will not make them work harder or inspire them to come up with new ideas. At the moment we should look for ways to support the people fixing the leak, not criticize them."


-- Great advice by Professor Caulkins, one of my favorite Kellogg Professors.