# 236: Carrots, No Sticks
Story behind the Passage
In a meeting today, someone mentioned that reading also is an issue of culture. Yes, in this case, I am truly talking about the simple activity of reading. I do not mean it metaphorically or philosophically. I mean it literally. When it comes to the respective media, I do refer to books here, as you can very well imagine (after all, this is my 236th day of blogging about a book passage every day…). Even though I think and write a lot about reading, especially when it comes to its value in business and entrepreneurship, I never thought about “reading education” in a cultural context that much — at least not consciously.
So, this contribution today made me think about the relationship between motivation and reading which ultimately made me think of Deci and Ryan’s motivation theory. The actual theory is called “Self Determination Theory” (SDT). I will talk more about this in a minute. The image that is mostly known in relation to motivation in a psychological research sense is the one of “carrots and sticks,” obviously. In the old days of business and leadership research, it was all about this. If you behave well and work hard, so the story goes, your boss rewards you (carrots). If you mess up or misbehave, your boss punishes you (sticks). But when my conversation partner today gave the example of how children learn to read books in other cultures, especially in the U.S., I also knew that the sticks are not needed to explain the basic mechanism of motivation that he was describing.
The story he shared was simply about how his son had been motivated to read books at a young age while living in the U.S. and how he and his classmates got little treats as rewards for reading books (or whatever short book versions were appropriate for their age). This immediately resonated with me because, if there is anything I mostly remember and admire about the U.S. pedagogy, even about the way how people raise their children there in general, it is this “playful competitiveness,” as I would call it. Yes, sure, there are extremes to this in some cases, e.g., when kids become professional fashion models at age five or baseball pros with an eight-hour training schedule each day — in other words, parents overdo it a bit with their own longing to compete. But I am not talking about these extremes. What I mean is the healthy kind of competitiveness that is triggered if you get positive incentives to do something without being punished if you do not do it (no sticks).
One might object now by saying, “hey, come on, this is not only the case in the U.S. People in other countries learn to read in a playful way too.” Yes, that is true. Still, the most recent example of creative reading education is from a reading campaign I read about several months ago while checking out the current research projects of the “Foundation for Reading” (Stiftung Lesen) on a website. The study they reported about was how children were incentivized to read more — or read at all — by means of giving them short books with their meals. And guess where the meals came from? McDonald’s! And which country does McDonald’s come from? Yes…. Here is a link to the current campaign and info about past reading projects:
Stiftung Lesen@McDonald‘s — Buch mit Pommes rot-weiß und ne App dazu — Stiftung Warentest
McDonald’s® Happy Meal — Immer auch mit Buch & Spende!
So, that much on “where creative ideas for making people read more” come from. Hence, there is much truth to this idea that reading books can also be the product of a particular approach to pedagogy, even civic education, and the role ‘competitiveness’ plays in it. The same applies to writing, by the way. Here, the focus is not on children but on adults, particularly scholars. If scholars are not encouraged to write books anymore, they will not do it. In the end, this also means, they will not learn it anymore. Yes, you are hearing me correctly. It is not the case (anymore) that all scholars know how to write books anymore because they are busy writing for (ranked) academic journals which nobody in the world outside academia reads. This still satisfies the competitive ambition of the scholars but it does not allow anybody else to learn from what they have to say.
Neither does anybody outside academia read it.
If you want to learn more about this.
Read this article by an acquaintance of mine (who went from consulting to academia and back again): Prof, no one is reading you, Opinion News & Top Stories — The Straits Times
The books these scholars would otherwise be writing if they were writing them based on sufficient incentives to do so would fall into the category of “public science.” I also include works from non-science fields in this, just to make this clear. In any case, these are the books that bright and innovative minds such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and even the now famous Biontech founder from Germany Ugur Sahin read when they were still kids (and I still do so too, even though I am not a Silicon Valley billionaire). What I am saying: The lack of incentives (carrots) for writing these books for the public has tremendous effects on the innovation output of a country. So, eventually, reading and writing has to be thought and taught together in the sense of “entrepreneurial literacy.”
My Learnings
“The issue of whether people stand behind a behavior out of their interests and values, or do it for reasons external to the self, is a matter of significance in every culture (e.g., Johnson, 1993) and represents a basic dimension by which people make sense of their own and others’ behavior (deCharms, 1968; Heider, 1958; Ryan & Connell, 1989).” What I find so interesting about this sentence is not the cultural component actually. Neither is it the fact that motivation is something that is relevant for all actions. What I find most interesting here is the fact that motivation theory, and the knowledge thereof, can also serve the purpose of a form of “literacy,” of sensemaking, if you want.
If you suggest that we all know that motivation is at the core of action, we also, even unconsciously, ask the question of why people do the things they do. Thus, we also know that some kinds of incentives drive people’s actions. I do not care so much about whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic right now. After all, all things go back to our inner life. But the point I want to make is that, if you do not pay attention to this, you are really missing out on something — on something major; at least in most cases that relate to social systems. If we were all yogis or enlightened to a degree, we would also know what true freedom means and thus only follow our inner drive. But most people have not reached this level of liberation (by the way, you can also get there by taking drugs which is what Steve Jobs also did. It just does not last for long, still, the state of consciousness is perceived as identical). Hence, they do operate according to extrinsic incentives. And in the case of the science and research system, even in the case of public education, these incentives are given by institutions and they work quite well.
If you want to change the results that an institution, such as the university, produces, of course, you would have to change the structure of incentives. Still, there is another option, which now brings back the issue of intrinsic motivation in combination with incentive creation. If your inner motivation completely differs from the one of the system and you decide to follow this impetus, you have the chance of motivating others. This is where the aspect of values mentioned in the sentence above comes in. If existing incentives are not enough to motivate you and if your own values are more in line with creating a different kind of output, you can follow this drive and produce different results.
Now the logic would go: Why would you do this if you do not get any rewards — no carrots, only sticks? That is where inner compensation comes back to the table. If you do not allow any external incentives to be attractive anymore, there is a possibility that your inner motivation is so strong that you do things without any outside motivation. After all, this is what entrepreneurs do all the time. It is not only that they are not offered any incentives or rewards for a long time — they are even confronted with a hell of problems (ask the Biontech founder about the hell you go through if you are a great scientist trying to save the world while at the same time being treated like the last idiot by bureaucratic “scholars” and nitpickers of all sorts who think they know it all…). But they do all this because their individual sense of gratification is met. In other words, they reap their rewards, they get the carrots, no matter what. And this makes them overwhelmingly happy…
This happiness, in turn, can become a strong incentive for others. This might sound cheesy but you can experience it all the time. If you are an entrepreneur who is really deeply happy with what you do every day, you spread happiness. And that happiness catches others and they might start doing things not because other people offer them treats or carrots but because they want the same inner fulfilment. This applies to entrepreneurship, the ability and willingness to disrupt existing systems, the introduction of new rules in old systems, and even to reading. If you learn that reading cannot only make you smart but happy, you will most likely do it. If you get some treat for reading even more — that is great too.
Hence, where are the carrots offered to scholars who are passionate entrepreneurs and who write a new chapter of their business every day?
Reflection Questions
1) What do you associate with the concept of “reading culture”? Does your country of origin have such a thing?
2) What is your primary motivation for doing the work you do on a daily basis?
3) Do you think that entrepreneurs are born rather than made? What makes you think so?