Gray Southon wrote:
> Simon,
>
> Your observations are very interesting, in particular
>
> 1. It is impossible to accurately reward people for all the
> contributions they make to the organisation, and
This is certainly the case- even (or especially!) in a two-person firm.
And if we strove to signal our performance fully and measure it fairly we
would drown in busyness- like the people who leave the vacuum out to show
others that they have been cleaning!
> 2. People trade off direct incenitive (accept flat salary) to have
> independence.
People will accept loss of lots of things for independence- many including
myself prefer "lean liberty to fat slavery". It is relatively easy in
relatively free market oriented economies like the US and the UK to get
jobs at the moment- and of course particularly difficult in those
countries with active government sectors- but I think that I would have to
have been living on the streets for three or four winters before I ever
took a full-time job in an office again. I know many young and other
people personally and electronically who feel the same way.
A big issue in many of the companies who talk to me is how to successfully
"recruit and retain" and I always advise freeing frustrated employees from
the shackles of org policies and procedures- downstructure to let them go
from rankers to branders and if they do subsequently leave the company-
partner rather than compete with them. The choice is- they leave anyway
or you can try to get them to stay.
Being a manager/ leader in an organization is going to be an often
intolerable job at any level of someone else's organization in the 21st
century- fewer and fewer people with less and less realized (in both
senses of the word) talent will want to stay. Try introducing teleworking
and then taking that opportunity back from teleworkers- the overwhelming
majority will NEVER go back. Freedom is intoxicating. One gulp and you are
addicted! Unfortunately, collectivism sells too- "lets all be sure of
taking care of everybody else"- with out rpolitics and our economics- nice
idea, but the power inherent in market forces is be far the strongest
force and will always deliver freedom in the end- its those incentives
gain- people perform better in incentive rich environments- and
organizations do not dleiver adequate incentivs throughout all the people
present in them.
> You also say:
>
> >I believe that the best way to incentivize people to learn, -snip- is
> >within a market-based
> >dynamic organizations such as a collapsible corporations in which members
> >voluntarily cooperate and collaborate to meet customer requirements. If
> >its my customer, as opposed to my company's customer- if they are ringing
> >me and not my company- then I am directly motivated and rewarded for
> >responding with excellence.
>
> I agree with the last comment - except what about all the people who
> provide the support services so those front end people can work
> efficiently - what sort of incentive do they get?
Support staff get whatever incentive they create for themselves- and
deliver to their customers, just like anyone else. I wrote an article on
unorg.com recently about secretaries in fact being chief logistics and
information coordinators- judge only according to talent and actual and
potential performance- see not "job title" but person- that goes for high
and low level people. I detest the practice of deferring and swooning over
those high up in the rank- people tapping you on the collar and saying "By
the way Simon, that's the chief executive"- I reply "I know, all your
tongues are hanging out."
> Also, has there been any research on the types of incentives that dominate
> in the most effective organisations of various types?
Don't know of any- remember you can find statistics to support anything-
lies or truth, but only truth is visible primarily through patterns in
observation- when different people in different places doing different
things with different backgrounds behave in the same way. Like all around
the world, the more government, the lower the sahre of potential growth
actually realized, and so to in companies. We think that it was good for a
company's revenues to be up by 25% last time around, but what if the
growth potential was 50%!!?? Its a disorganized world, but changeable!
regards simon
http://www.unorg.com/weekly.htm
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>