“Granny’s Rule” to govern their own daily behavior. Granny’s Rule, to be

specific, is the requirement that children eat their carrots before they get

dessert. And the business version requires that executives force themselves

daily to first do their unpleasant and necessary tasks before rewarding

themselves by proceeding to their pleasant tasks. Given reward superpower, this

practice is wise and sound. Moreover, the rule can also be used in the

nonbusiness part of life. The emphasis on daily use of this practice is not

accidental. The consultants well know, after the teaching of Skinner, that

prompt rewards work best.

 

Punishments, of course, also strongly influence behavior and cognition, although

not so flexibly and wonderfully as rewards. For instance, illegal price fixing

was fairly common in America when it was customarily punished by modest fines.

Then, after a few prominent business executives were removed from their eminent

positions and sent to federal prisons, price-fixing behavior was greatly

reduced.

 

Military and naval organizations have very often been extreme in using

punishment to change behavior, probably because they needed to cause extreme

behavior. Around the time of Caesar, there was a European tribe that, when the

assembly horn blew, always killed the last warrior to reach his assigned place,

and no one enjoyed fighting this tribe. And George Washington hanged farm-boy

deserters forty feet high as an example to others who might contemplate

desertion.