Create Your Own Competition

Everybody enjoys a challenge -- and people tend to rise to the level of their competition. So if your business has an important goal, try putting staff members on competing teams. No one will want to be seen as "the slacker."

Andrew Carnegie once hired a consultant to improve productivity in an assembly plant.
He studied the factory for a few weeks, examining workers on both the day shift and the night shift.

At the end of one night shift, the consultant took out a chalk marker and wrote a huge "6" on the floor. As day-shift workers arrived in the morning, word spread that this was how many units had been produced by the other team. The day workers produced seven units that day and wrote the new number down. This went on until both shifts had nearly doubled their output.

This was probably a healthy organization to start with, since the workers didn't need financial incentives to improve themselves. Appealing to their pride in their own work was enough to do the trick.