incentivize

Intermediate 💼 Corporate / Business

Definition

The corporate verb for bribing people with rewards to do what you want, because "motivate" sounded too human and "bribe" too honest. It's the art of dangling carrots—usually cash, equity, or pizza parties—to make employees enthusiastic about objectives they'd otherwise ignore. Management loves this word because it makes manipulation sound like science.

Example Usage

The company decided to incentivize productivity with a bonus structure so complex that nobody understood it enough to be motivated.

Source: Common corporate terminology

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