The invisible hand inside the org chart.
Prime Future 263: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
You’ve probably heard that quote, but you may not have heard this one:
“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
These two Charlie Munger quotes pack a one-two punch, but Warren Buffett drives the point all the way home with this one:
"If you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes.”
I’d wager 30 grams of protein that you instinctively agree with all of those quotes.
They resonate with our lived experiences because we’ve all seen incentives play out in good and disastrous ways. But if we know incentives drive outcomes, why are incentives not the first thing a leader thinks about when trying to get different results?
And if dumb outcomes can be traced to dumb incentives, why are organizations not clamoring to innovate around incentives as a source of competitive advantage?
Today, let’s kick around the power of incentives and why it’s hyper-relevant for alllll of us — from livestock producers to processors, and tech startups to multinational corporations.
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