A first-hand example emerged in a recent interview of a highly successful salesperson who was being considered for management. This person has a reputation in our company for consistently opening more new accounts than anyone else in the organization. He's always ahead of plan, always busy, and never seems to lose his enthusiasm for the job. The fire in his eyes when he related this made it obvious that he has a unique, emotional attachment to what he does for a living. It's no mystery that emotional involvement is essential to superior achievement in any endeavor.
Contemporary examples abound in sports, academics and, in fact, all walks of life.
History provides us with a limitless stream of heroes and heroines who overcame enormous odds to accomplish their goals. This question came into focus for me five or six years ago, when we began to see a trend in the incentive business toward monetary awards of various kinds. It began with cash payments and quickly migrated to retail gift certificates, then to credit and debit cards. Money, in various forms, had become the incentive of choice among many traditional incentive program sponsors. The arguments in favor of monetary rewards were powerful.