The first of these was that we established a clearer focus between short-term goals and long-term or institutional goals. For example, a short-term goal included contacting local farmers' markets to get more donations of fresh produce to the agency. An associated short-term goal was that the agency needed to have more available refrigerators in the storage area to keep the produce fresh.
A team was chosen from the paid and volunteer workers were given set goals in terms of the amount of fresh food brought in and distributed. After two weeks, the progress toward these goals was assessed and each member of the team (which had surpassed the goals) was given a gift certificate for the farmers' markets. The effect of this short-term goal was that it proved to be extremely powerful. This arose from the fact that it was relatively immediate; it also arose from the fact that it created alliances between the paid and volunteer workers and helped to clarify institutional goals.
One of the key tasks for any organizational leader is to link rewards to institutional culture and goals. This may seem to be an obvious thing to do, but in my experience (and certainly I am far from unusual in this way) far too often there is no clear connection between goals and rewards. In fact, this lack of clarity on the part of leaders may well be one reason why short-term rewards are so often not offered. For leaders to be able to offer short-term...
(Bass & Bass, 2008, p. 171).
Long-term rewards are important. But short-term rewards have an important role in the short-term. Human nature is such that we are pleased when the reward follows relatively closely on the heels of the effort. But beyond this basic fact of human psychology is the organizational dynamic that being able to determine appropriate short-term rewards requires leaders to determine both short-term and long-term goals (Bass & Riggio, 2005, p. 88). This fact at least as much as the increased productivity and increased sense of satisfaction that are likely to arise with the addition of short-term rewards makes the institution of short-term rewards a good organizational choice.
References
Bass, B. & Bass, R. (2008). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications (4th ed.). New York: Free Press.
Bass, B. & Riggio, R. (2005). Transformational leadership. (2nd ed.) New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
For example, our knowledge enables us to differentiate clearly between short-term bonus objectives -- such as meeting a specific team target -- and longer-term business or organizational goals which may be better rewarded through long-term incentives -- or even through changes to base pay or benefits.
