Hugged to death. http://archive.is/h9dih http://archive.is/h9dih has it. >Tell smart people to work on what is important to them, but don’t tell them (ever)

Hugged to death. http://archive.is/h9dih http://archive.is/h9dih has it. >Tell smart people to work on what is important to them, but don’t tell them (ever) what exactly they must do. Do not reward any of them visibly for any repeatable action. Recapitulates the rather famous advice attributed, by way of Rayleigh, to J. J. Thompson: "If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do no come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want one kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it."