The human brain loves a contest. I tend to avoid contests for luck only, and have never bought a lottery ticket in my life… but I love a great mind-bender. Did you know that the human brain is hardwired to solve problems and create products that jumps to the challenge with a contest.
Take it a bit further and imagine rebooting talent from high-performance minds at your firm that translates into profitability. These two things are interconnected when you create a contest with the brain in mind. 
Here are five key criteria that link high performance brains to higher profit and create new neuron pathways to healthier competition.
1. Build a platform for fairness from the start so that people see the links between their effort and talent and your reward for the winning prize. That fairness builds trust in people at your firm and gives them the serotonin jumpstart they need to create and come back to future contests if they don’t make this one.
2. Enlist several unbiased judges who are skillful at judging high-performance contests … and ensure that several are part of the process for any winner selected.
3. Avoid any personal control of winners… instead set clear directions to prevent the same person from winning any contest more than once in a year… and you open up space for new competitors in a high-performance process.
4. Set contests to appeal to winners of multiple intelligence assets. If you notice all techies are winning your contests and other intelligent people are excluded by your format, for instance, change the contest to use additional intelligences and drop the high tech component for a few rounds.
5. Find ways to engage highly competitive extraverts as well as to welcome quieter upstarts. You do this by the way you arrange the competition tasks and the fair way you judge by clear criteria set out when the contest is first posted.
Everybody loves a contest when the rules engage their intelligence and when the challenge causes them to reboot their brains in unique ways. Some of us run 18 hour days and still find time for your contest – so never assume that only those with “more time” will jump to play your rules. Instead look for brilliant ways to engage the high-performance mind and then reward what that mind brings you.
Vary the outcomes … allow the same person to win only once a year … and watch a new excitement engage the experts to add to your profit. That’s what a high performance mind is wired to do anyway – so why not capitalize on the excitement so many brains can bring to boost your business!
By the way, there is a terrific contest this month over at Brain Boomer, and the prize is a Brain Age Game. Looking for a reward to spike your talent?
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