Rabbits: A Management Parable, Part II

The book mentioned in my previous post also had another parable, this one featuring a clan of rabbits that lived in a forest and was led by an Alpha. Each day, all the rabbits would go out and look for food. At the end of the day, the food gathered would be divided equally among all, and for a while, everything was good.

However, one day, Alpha noticed that food input was dropping. After thorough investigation, he found that this decrease was all due to a small group of rabbits slacking off. Something must be done, for the laziness was spreading. The root of the problem was that there was no reward for harder work. “What’s the point of working harder if we get the same amount anyways?” So KR implemented a new policy. Whoever works hard will get an additional carrot to his ration.

Binky the bunny was the first to receive the carrot. The rest of the rabbit clan went nuts. Several elders demanded an explanation as to why he and not they got the reward. “Binky has worked hard and behaved well," Alpha explained. "If you show evidence of good behavior, you can also earn carrots.”

Alpha thought this would motivate the clan to greater productivity, but it had the opposite effect. Every rabbit attempted to display “good behavior” in front of Alpha. Thus, more often than not rewards were given to those who were good at stealing the spotlight. Morale dropped rapidly, for those who worked but were not seen working felt they were not being rewarded for their efforts. After a while, Alpha saw that this wasn’t working. So he implemented a new policy: the more food one brings in, the more food one gets.

This was good for a while. But afterwards, there was less and less food, due to excessive collecting having depleted the rabbits’ local food supply. So Alpha had to think about a new policy again. One day, Binky broke his foot while looking for food, so his friend Bob donated half his portion to Binky’s total. KR heard about this and was happy, and when he met Bob he immediately gave Bob two carrots.

This opened up another can of worms. The Spotlight-Stealing Game began anew. Not only that, but Alpha was constantly besieged by complaints such as “I worked harder than that guy, so how come he got more than me?” and “I got twice as much the last time I brought in this amount!” Finally tired of all the complaining, Alpha implemented a new policy: those who are willing to work hard will immediately receive a basket of carrots. Lots of rabbits signed up. Alpha was finally happy.

One problem: once the rabbits received their carrots, they began slacking off again. When questioned, they replied, “We already got the carrots, so what’s the point in working?”

Moral: Rewards can be a great motivator, but it must be made clear just what exactly one is rewarding, otherwise you're not rewarding productivity, but how well someone can show off. Also, one cannot arbitrarily give out rewards. Failure to award wisely leads to a situation where even big rewards do not work.