# General Business Category > Entrepreneurship and Business Management Forum >  shaping behaviour

## duncan drennan

I cam across two interesting posts on Architectures of Control. The blog is about how things are design (or not designed) to control behaviour. The first post, Shaping Behaviour: Part 1 goes through the carrot and the stick theory and the second, Shaping Behaviour: Part 2 goes through the speedomoter theory, i.e.,




> ...showing them the results of their actions, how theyÃ¢â¬â¢re doing, or how well they could be doing if they changed their behaviour...


He ends with this,




> Is it true, then to say that any situation where one entity (person/animal/plant) is trying to change the behaviour of another entity is resolved either by control (forcing the change in behaviour) or persuasion (inspiring the change in behaviour), or a combination of the two (e.g. by tricking the entity into changing behaviour)?
> 
> Or is that too simplistic?


So what can this mean for how we structure our work environments? At the end of the day we're trying to achieve a certain set of goals set by shareholders/management/owners/etc. which implies getting other people to do what we want. Obviously the best way is if those people want to do what we want. Is his summary "too simplistic"?

I suppose a lot of this goes back to our discussion on "What motivates your staff?"

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