Verne Harnish’s latest newsletter mentions an interesting website called Stickk that is intended to allow you to create your own reinforcement system. Set up a goal, commit an amount of your own money that you will pay yourself for accomplishing the goal and off you go. The goal can be anything you choose.

If you don’t achieve the goal, the money is forfeit, and goes to whomever you designate, such as a charity, your ex-wife, and so on.

So is this positive or negative reinforcement? Well, it all depends on whether is causes the behavior to repeat. If you use the site once, lose money, and don’t return, negative reinforcement. Use the site, lose money, return and try again, positive reinforcement for site usage. Use the site, accomplish your goal, don’t return, negative reinforcement for site usage and goal accomplishment. Use the site, accomplish your goal, return again, positive reinforcement for site usage.

So it seems as if the reinforcement scheme is keyed to the website and not the goal. Which is what I would want if I built that website. And in fact it is the exact issue we have faced at PositiveWare. Users completing tasks or actions don’t necessarily get reinforcement from the software. Users have suggested that we embed rewards in the application, so that the 23rd user completing a task gets a movie ticket or lottery tickets or whatever.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Management, PositiveWare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.