The Power of a Random Reward to Motivate

When I was performing magic at a theme restaurant early in my magic career, I learned something about how to create a feeling of excitement. The manager had hired a clown, a magician, a belly dancer, and a juggler to perform in the nightclub. I of course was the magician in the bunch. The manager being like most managers wanted someone on the floor entertaining at all times. He saw the structure as a good thing. So each of the entertainers were required to be on twenty minute schedules. Twenty minutes of performing and then ten minutes on brake. It seemed on the surface to be a very good plan. But after a brief comment from one of the customers one evening, I realized that what the manager was trying to achieve was actually counter productive.

One of the customers said to me, "When I first came I here, I was blown away because the first thing I saw was this clown running out of the kitchen yelling, 'TRY THE VEAL!! TRY THE VEAL!' and I thought it was hilarious. But after a couple hours of this guy running out every ten minutes yelling 'TRY THE VEAL' quite frankly he's driving me nuts. I think I'm going to have to leave."

I asked him, "What about the belly dancer?" He said, "oh yeah I saw her last week, she was pretty good." (She had also been performing that night.)

What happened? Repetition creates three things, invisibility, irritability and boredom. By making the clown come out every ten minutes, what was first time interesting and exciting, soon became boring and even in the case of the clown, "irritating."

Our minds crave something new. We love it and the word "new" is plastered in advertising because advertisers know this. Randomness is newness to the mind. When we see something that is out of place, we are drawn to it to discover why it is, where and when, it is happening. Curiosity is built into our brains as a method of survival. And randomness captures that curiosity.

What does this mean when motivating employees? It means that giving a person a commission for each sale is simply not enough. It will soon become the clown yelling "TRY THE VEAL!!" This is why a random reward works so much better. Take slot machines for example. Put two machines side by side. One that pays a four percent return every time, and one that pays a random thousand dollars. Who would want to play the one that paid the constant return? You put in a dollar and it gives you a dollar and four cents. You might sit down and pull it a few times, maybe even a hundred, but you'd eventually say, it's just not worth it, I'm bored.

Then the guy next to you who has been pulling his slot lever for ten minutes, suddenly yells, "JACKPOT!" and has a thousand dollars. How long do you think it would take before you switched machines? The  power of a random reward is the most powerful motivational force you can use to motivate your employees. When you find them doing something good, randomly, give them a random reward. Make it something unique and you'll be ten times as affective. Try this today. If one of your employees does a great job, give him or her a copy of my book, THE MAGIC LIFE. Now that is random.