Dennis Keibler in LO15407 made a number of good comments and asked some
most interesting questions. Among them,
>How have you, in the above and other ventures, distributed compensation
>among the team members? Do consultants view their own internal pay scales
>as fair processes? What methods have you found that Are working well?
On the one hand, I had my "consultant to organizations" hat on and on the
other, I was thinking as a small business owner when I read his post.
Apologies in advance for a bit of a rambling response.
I started consulting in 1978 after two years of university teaching and 5
years of graduate school. There were lots of situational opportunities
since that time. Most were good.
Overall, I like to work with groups / teams in defining problems and
generating solutions but I often did not like wearing the mantle of Team
Leader, expecially when the expectations of outcomes were not clear. I
worked for a couple of entrepreneur consultants who were unreal at selling
projects with outcomes none of us could really understand. It often made
things interesting!
And as I became more "expert" in a problem-identification, problem-solving
process, there was a tendency for me to become more of a "let's save time
- here's the solution" kind of thinker. I guess it is a fairly common
behavior. Funny, this saves time but generates less team ownership and
thus lessens long-term, overall impacts.
Insofar as monetary compensation is concerned, I was always happy when I
made more money than I expected and generally dissatisfied when I didn't.
When I was working with a team of consultants, oftentimes I had more
experience and tenure and thus was more highly compensated; when it wasn't
the case, there was more dissatisfaction. It was always a comparison --
the absolute dollars weren't as important as the relative rank. What was
motivating were the challenges and timelines.
When we were on a project profit-sharing basis, things were better because
team efforts were rewarded and we would be more likely to self-manage and
self-support expectations and contributions.
But, over a 10-year period of all kinds of inside / outside /
collaborative / independent / subordinate situations, it just seemed
better for me to operate as the one-person band and be totally accountable
for my own results and compensation. Nicely, technology and culture
facilitate the shift toward a virtual organizations lots more today than
even a few years ago. For me, ownership and status were always important
factors in my motivational structure.
Today, I've evolved my business to pretty-much the desired state. I work
at home with my wife. We structure our decisions on what she and I can
support, knowing that we could have more revenues with more employees but
not wanting the added complexity. I put in lots of hours, but am
self-directed and self-managed. The workaholic tendencies seem pretty
balanced most of the time.
And I find myself free of these complicating and complex "compensation"
and "fairness" issues as well as the petty stuff that happens around them
in most of my work environments.
-- For the FUN of It!Scott Simmerman Performance Management Company 3 Old Oak Drive, Taylors, SC 29687 (USA) 864-292-8700 fax 292-6222 SquareWheels@compuserve.com
visit The Lost Dutchman at http://www.clicknow.com/stagedright/dutchman/
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>