In the second in a series of four edited extracts from Managing Conflict, the new book in the Lessons Learned series from Harvard Business School Press and Fifty Lessons, Mark Gerzon, the president of Mediators Foundation, talks about incentives.

LESSON SUMMARY POINTS:

1. Look carefully at the incentive structures within your company because they will determine what kind of behaviour you get.

2. If you set up competitive structures, make sure that they are in the interest of the whole company.

3. If you incentivise internal competition, you'll create fragmentation and disorder.

4. If you incentivise synergy, you'll get people to work for the good of the company as a whole.

This article is by extracted from the latest book in the Lessons Learned series, Managing Conflict; Copyright (c) 2007 Fifty Lessons Limited; All Rights Reserved. For more on the series see www.fiftylessons.com

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