Q is for quantisation

Our organisation recently played a Gallup game called Q12. The belief is that employees' answers to 12 questions will give you a scorecard so you can compare your team with the division and the organisation as a whole on all kinds of things related to job satisfaction.

I can understand the need to measure performance and effectiveness, but it gets ridiculous when we think it's somehow "bad" that we don't get enough praise every week and need to start doing something artificially. Once you institutionalise the frequency with which praises are offered, they become physiological, not spiritual. In other words they just don't work any more.