What if the reason why you do good work is not to get a reward but because of something deeper.

Reward is the least motivating factor when it comes to good work. Understanding this would help you align incentives to to maximize performance

Psychologically speaking, there are two types of motivation: Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation simple mean the inate motivation to learn, grow and develop. It is a kind of motivation that is experience when an individual desire to learn without any eternal reward or incentive.
On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is one that follows a reward. A typical example would be giving bonuses to the best performers of a field, attaching reward to an activity etc are examples of extrinsic motivation.

The question now becomes which of these motivations produces the highest result? The answer to this is explained by the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi. He asserted that the the best of human performance is seen when the individual is willing to do a task; not because there's a reward attached to it, but because the very activity is a reward itself. He also coined the term flow. Which is a psychological term that explain how we loose ourselves in activities we find pleasing.
Now, his perspective provides us with an in-depth understanding of motivation and how it affects our work.
On the other hand, extrinsic result, though can produce good work, it has a negative impact on the long run. Think of the times when your siblings or parents use reward to manipulate you into doing something; you ended up doing the work because of the reward attached to it. At some point, the reward determines your work. To say it differently, the quality of your work is dependent on the reward given; and in the absence of reward you ended up producing what I call bad work.

To summarize what I've said, the best of human performance is seen when the motivation is intrinsic, not extrinsic.