This cracked me up when I read it 🙂 I am probably guilty of using the wrong incentives from time to time but it is a great illustration of something I have been thinking and talking about for the last year.
“What you measure defines you”
If you measure, actively share and display your profits, it may lead to you comparing your current profitability to periods gone by, which will probably lead to goals being set for staff around improving that metric, which can easily become the dominant culture and purpose of your organisation.
This is fine if profit IS your only goal. If it is not then then the other important data needs to have a light shined on it too!!!
The challenge is that often absolute numbers are a lot easier to track than, attitude,  holistic value, or long term impact so you will probably have to work hard to build systems ans cultures that celebrate other kinds of activity and success.
Every 2 days more personal data is created than in the rest of history up until 2003.
This means that being selective about what data we choose to look at matters more than ever!
Think about what organisation you want to run, if profit isn’t the only driver don’t promote the measurement of it above all else.