External Discipline

[Shaman]

In the Ben Hur movie, you had slaves rowing the ship and slave drivers whipping the slaves to row faster and the slaves would follow. This is an example of using the "stick" to motivate people to follow rules.

In school, I'm sure you've had disciplinarian teachers that used threats and punishment to make her students conform to the rules. Yet another example of using the "stick" to motivate people.

More importantly, you had CHARMING teachers that got the students to conform to the rules without so much as raising their voices. This is an example of using the "carrot" to motivate people.

In the workplace, people conform to rules. And it almost does not matter whether Theory X ("stick"), Theory Y ("carrot"), or Theory Z ("carrot") management is used to motivate people to follow rules.

All of these examples have one thing in common. And that is that outside forces are used to motivate people to have discipline to follow rules.

All of these are examples of externally driven motivation. Someone besides the person is making the person follow the rules of the organization. Discipline does not come from inside the person. Rather, it is forced from outside the person.

Now let us say that you had a "poker hedge fund" of 10 employees/players that multi-table for you. Furthermore, you had two very technically knowledgeable and strategically talented players that have tilt problems. In other words, these two players cannot use INTERNAL DISCIPLINE to make themselves do the right thing once they have just taken a bad beat. Is it possible to use EXTERNAL DISCIPLINE to motivate them to not go on tilt? If so, how specifically would you do it?

I figured that if companies can make their employees follow the rules and regulations with the use of external forces, and schools can make their students follow the rules, how can it be not possible to use external forces to force players into playing disciplined poker even if they wouldn't have been able to do it all by themselves using internal motivation?

[BluffTHIS!]

1) Commission pay system.

2) Fire & hire.

3) Use bots.

[mosquito]

Indeed, they can't always make people follow the
rules. That's why there are talented people who
are dropouts, unemployed and so on.

Ultimately the discipline comes from within, all
you are providing is (usually) artificial motivation.

I say usually, because the truest motivator is
life and death.

[Stuey]

How would you identify if the players were losing due to tilt?

I know it could be done. But could you do it in a cost effective way? Can we compare employee theft to a hired poker player tilting? If this is a valid comparison I submit the following from my personal experiences.

1. The best way to protect yourself from employee theft/tilting is to not hire thieves/tilters.

This will sound simplistic and silly to most people. The effort to identify the theft/tilting can be so large no benefit is gained from employing these people. Time spent weeding out people with these flaws is well spent. A true thief/tilter will find a way to hide the behavior from the employer.

2. If you find an employee is stealing/tilting can you tolerate the behavior and still show an acceptable profit?

If you are very confident the stealing/tilting is limited and can be monitored in a cost effective manner you can keep a thief/tilter on your staff. However you run the risk of infecting your entire staff. If others are aware that the stealing/tilting players are going unpunished they may start stealing/tilting.

3. Can you implement a self-monitoring system?

You can’t watch these people near as well as they can watch themselves and each other. I do not think a thief/tilter can change his behavior regardless of the size of the carrot. But give a carrot to a non-stealing/tilting employee and he will monitor the situation very closely. Still I remove the offender when identified instead or trying to change him.

If you perfect this you could rule the world IMO. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[pokerrookie]

Will somebody tilt if they are losing somebody else's money?

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
Will somebody tilt if they are losing somebody else's money?

[/ QUOTE ]

If they're paid on commission they might.

[pokerrookie]

So that is a reason not to pay a commision, right?