The Ohio Buckeyes football team in 1968 started an experiment to incentivize team players. Individuals with stellar performances with rewarded at the end of each game. The team won the championship that year and this practice got adopted across the league. However, by 2001 this practice had long ceased to be effective and the Buckeyes hadn’t done well on the national scene for years. The new coach discontinued this trend and replaced it by rewarding an entire unit for success in the common targets for example the offensive unit for scoring points. They once again won the championship and by now this practice has proved to be far more sustainable as a measure of talent management. Human beings have long been social animals so group goals tend to motivate us more. We also bask in the glory of our colleagues’ successes. Thus in order to build strong group cohesion, leaders must take a few replicable steps. One of them is to realize that employees have social needs and work towards them. Also rewards must be set for achieving the overall corporate strategy and not individual departmental ones, as that practice encourages impenetrable silos to develop. However such an approach could have a downside in encouraging free-ridership. Thus some forms of individual targets must also be set. So that the organization structure doesn’t get rigid, some form of dissent within the group must be allowed.

Source:https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-problem-with-rewarding-individual-performers?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&spMailingID=16213556&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=922436335&spReportId=OTIyNDM2MzM1S0