As Malcolm Gladwell says in Outliers..”the more money they made the next day on the streets. Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us.”

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.” Malcolm Gladwell Outliers.

This theme is repeated by a number of authors and discovered via a number of controlled experiments yet we resist it as it just seems too hard compared to simpler carrot and stick approaches. These reward approaches whilst ineffective make us feel as leaders we are doing something..but is it enough?