John,
The primary reason I suggested the course of action I did (basically do
some direct benchmarking, using direction from list members to speed the
process) was that I do not believe there is one answer to the question.
Therefore, you must understand in which specific situations various plans
work, and where they do not. There are on this list, a lot of people who
are proponents of teams, including myself. However, there are some great
articles -- recently about Levi -- where teams have failed
catastrophically. There is likewise some excellent research that shows
that "pay for performance" is counter-productive. On the other hand,
there are not many organizations that meet the criteria I set for you,
that is, that do not practice pay for performance, that actually achieve
high performance, and that have high employee satisfaction at the same
time. I don't know of any such companies, but even if there are some, the
message is that the evidence on this issue is ambiguous. Therefore,
before you choose one route over another, you must be very clear about
your individual and organizational circumstances, and what kinds of risks
you want to take with your organization.
--Rol Fessenden
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>