💡 Incentives are supposed to motivate us, to keep business goals aligned with individual effort. But over time, they can start to distort what they were meant to encourage. What began as a system to reward performance often ends up rewarding performance theater, visible output over lasting impact.
The same happens at the organizational level. Investors push for quarterly returns, executives respond with targets, and the pressure cascades down the hierarchy until even well-intentioned teams are optimizing for metrics instead of meaning. The result is efficiency without reflection, a culture that’s constantly producing but rarely thinking. We often see the symptoms of this in low employee engagement.
None of this is new. Incentives are powerful because they work, but crucially, only on what they can measure. And most of what actually matters in human work, such as creativity, trust, and moral courage, often refuses to be reduced to a quantified KPI. When organizations forget this, they start managing noisy incentives instead of listening for the metaphorical harmony of great teamwork and good ideas.
The healthiest teams I’ve seen build space for the unmeasured. They design incentives that align with values, not just volume. They protect reflection time, mentorship, and experimentation from the tyranny of short-term ROI. They know that sustainable performance comes from intrinsic drive — not just external pressure.
And maybe that’s why I still love commercial-free radio. UCSC’s KZSC in Santa Cruz and KCSM - the Bay Area’s Jazz Station - remind me that not everything has to be sold to be valuable. Sometimes, the best signal that something is inherently valuable is that it is not interrupted by the noise of incentives and is allowed to stand alone.
⚓ Anchor It in Action
This week, listen for the “ads” in your own work, the incentives telling you to produce faster, sell harder, or stay visible. Then turn the dial toward what’s meaningful, not just measurable, and see if what perspectives you find. Does it make you a more valuable worker?
