What are we working for?

Throughout my childhood I moved school every two years and so have attended nine educational establishments in my life. In each of these it was interesting to discover that although many things remained largely identical there were one or two slight differences which made the difference.

I have noticed something very similar in the working world, having worked for different organisations as an employee and then as a consultant. Largely companies appear very similar, but there are one or two subtle shifts which seem to make all the difference.

It has lead to this fairly self-evident observation, which is by no means new: People work towards what they perceive to be winning.

Interestingly this view of winning can be easily forced from outside and does not have to be entirely rational to start the herd mentality conforming with it. For example, a close female friend, Rachel*, has been working in a large British bank as a personal banker. In the personal banking world of this corporation you are awarded points for achieving certain things and are awarded a small increase in salary each year in line with the points you have accrued.

Now Rachel intends to leave within then next six months to train to be a social-worker, but still persists in attempting to gain points, even though these will never be of any value to her. She is finding collecting points difficult as she is still fairly inexperienced and people are refusing to help her.

Two observations from this are:
1. The point system is fundamentally flawed
2. Even though it is of no gain to her and actually harms her to push for points, Rachel persists in pushing for points anyway

The point system is fundamentally flawed

Now this point system could be easily refined so that it encourages training of others. This "viral training" is vital to the bank keeping its recruiting and training costs low, but is entirely unrewarded in their fundamental definition of winning: points.

This could easily be remedied by providing some kind of a multi-level marketting approach to points, whereby you achieve a percentage of those who count you as "influential" in their training, encouraging a more collaborative effort.

This new point system would also be flawed: any point system will always be flawed, but the weightings on this new system are much more flexible and encourage collaboration more fundamentally than the law of the jungle points system which is only likely to work in a Machiavellian hard-sale environment

Rachel reacts illogically and conforms with the point system anyway

Even though it would be more beneficial to her colleagues perceptions of her if she were to give her points to them and would not be even slightly detrimental to her prospects as she is leaving before they can be cashed in, Rachel still feels an emotional pull towards the built in definition of winning - to go where the group goes. And Rachel finds this very stressful.

Which leads to two questions, neither of which is particularly deep, but are simply these:

Firstly: Why do we let others' definitions of winning affect our behaviour so fundamentally without questioning them?

Secondly: When the definition of winning does so obviously affect how the vast majority of people act, why don't companies (and governments) ensure they keep them understandable, flexible and relevant to changing environments?

*names have been changed