How and why the Net Promoter approach motivates front line employees
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 8:04AM Most executives who hear about the Net Promoter system conclude that the reason it works is because it creates a clear outcome metric to which we can hold front line employees, supervisors, managers and executives accountable. In fact, some of the NPS early adopters, most notably GE, focused most of their early efforts on creating a score, setting goals, and linking compensation and incentives to achieving goals for improving that score.
Daniel Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Amazon listing), references academic research that calls into question the model of behavior at work that relies on a simple "carrot and stick" approach to motivation. First, he shows that the typical reward-and-punish approach often fails to produce the required results, and often produces lower levels of achievement than no incentives at all. Then he shows that a very different approach works much better. This approach is highly consistent with the fundamental principles of the Net Promoter system, and may explain some of why it works so well in so many companies.
Pink reports on a simple and compelling model for motivating achievement in complex tasks (such as, say, figuring out how to really wow a customer in a service interaction). It is built on three elements:
- Autonomy: People want to have control over their work.