Nobody Is the Villain
Picture a sales manager named Colin. He is kind, he coaches his team after hours, and he teaches the new people to be honest with customers. His team is paid on the numbers at the end of each quarter.
It is the last week of March. A customer is ready to buy a package today. Colin knows the customer would be better served by a newer version that arrives in April. If he tells the customer to wait, the sale lands in the next quarter, his team’s bonuses shrink, and two of his people have rent due.
He thinks about it for a day. Then he sells the package.
Colin is a decent man inside a structure that pays for one choice.
Now say the company replaces him with Denise, who is just as careful and just as honest. It is the last week of March. She has the same customer, the same bonuses, and the same two people with rent due. She sells the package.
The people changed, and the result stayed. So the cause sits in how the pay is set.
A system, in the sense I use here, is a set of rewards and costs that produces a predictable result whatever the intentions of the people inside it. Nobody has to plan it. It runs because each person answers what is in front of them.
Once the pay is clear, many bills may look less like someone’s scheme. The insurance premium, the property tax and the price of a car come out of rooms full of decent people responding to what they are paid for, what they are measured on and what they are afraid of losing.
Changing a reward from the inside is slow work, because nearly everyone in the room benefits from the current one. A person who steps out of the system, even for a while, may see more choices than the people inside it.
When something seems unfair, you could ask three questions. What are the people here paid for? What are they measured on? What would they lose if they did the other thing?
Where have you seen kind people produce an unkind result, and what do you think was being rewarded? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be facing the same kind of choice.
Tell us in the comments