Sales People Are People Too

photo by AMagill

photo by AMagill

Neil Davidson at Red Gate Software had a great post the other day on their new approach to compensating salespeople.  In sum, they’ve stopped assuming salespeople are only motivated by money and have begun compensating them like everyone else.

Not only has this cut down on the time it takes to manage the process, but it has eliminated unintended, but perverse, incentives and helped to align their sales team with the rest of organization.

As Neil’s post mentions, fear is not a good motivator.  And as I noted a few weeks ago, neither are extrinsic rewards.

Sales people aren’t all that different from everyone else in your organization in that they have values which motivate them and they have professional goals they want to achieve.

In many cases, the exorbitant rewards that come with the ‘eat what you kill’ mentality are a stand-in for something else.  Recognition.  Though they work outside of the company’s walls more than others they want to be a part of a team and be recognized for doing a great job.

With apologies to Adam Smith, that is human nature.

We’ve boiled recognition down to money because it’s the easiest thing to do.  Rarely is it not valued.  But it’s typically not what is most valued.

When rewards (for anyone) come in the form of legal tender then you’re bound to lose them to a higher bidder when one inevitably comes along.  You wind up attracting mercenaries when you really want people who are dedicated, engaged and work well with others.

So let’s stop taking shortcuts to motivate our employees.  Money is nice, but most people just want to know that they are being fairly compensated and that when they do a good job that they will be recognized in a way that is meaningful to them.

It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more effective to try to identify people’s goals and then align the rewards to help meet them.

While I don’t know if Red Gate’s approach will work, I’d like to believe it will.   It just feels right.  I would love to read a follow up post on how this works out in another several months once the existing sales pipeline has been turned over.

What are you thoughts?  Will it work?

Posted by brentdaily on September 23, 2009 | Add a comment | Hiring, Motivation, Promotion, Values, compensation

Promoting Experience, Not Abilities

It never ceases to amaze that seemingly progressive companies still have, ahem, ‘guidelines’ for how long an individual must be in a particular role prior to being considered for a promotion.  Unless you’re running a prison, time should have no bearing on your decision to move someone beyond their existing role.  (Though in fairness, it may feel like just that to the people in the organization.)

photo by daniel j

photo by daniel james

I touched on how ridiculous this practice is by equating to the sports world several months ago, but I wanted to take a deeper look at why this practice is far dumber than it sounds.

  1. Weeding out your stars. The best people want to be challenged.  They want to learn new things and be forced to step up their game in order to succeed.  If you’re bright, highly effective at what you do but aren’t challenged and have no prospects of being challenged until you log the requisite service time then you aren’t going to stick around.  Good people have options.  Bad companies do not.
  2. Losing your edge. Service time often comes along with a checklist whereby various tasks need to have been completed.  All this translates into stocking your company full of passive bureaucrats who accept that ‘that’s the way things are.’  If you’re looking to succeed within your industry you have to constantly be redefining the rules of the game in order to fit your strengths.  Success is rarely bred from people who accept the status quo.
  3. Breeding helplessness. It doesn’t take too many repetitions for one to learn new behavior.  If after knocking a couple projects out of the park and wildly succeeding there is no reward then that extra effort will rapidly diminish.  Other than personal pride, what’s the point of doing excellent work if it’s not rewarded?  Promotions based on service time are an implicit statement to your employees that it doesn’t matter how well they do so long as they do it for a long time.  You’ve completely taken an employee’s control over their own destiny out of their hands.  That helplessness rarely concocts innovative solutions, creates new ideas or pushes ahead.  (See Motor Vehicles, Department of)
  4. Failing to develop home-grown talent. Why bother coaching your stars if they still have 24-months prior to even being considered for doing more?  It provides such a convenient out for managers that they’ll inevitably grab it.  Coaching is hard.  It isn’t rewarded.  And it takes time away from doing the ‘real work.’  In the long run you’ll feel as though you have to keep hiring from outside to fill the gaps in your organization because you didn’t spend the time early on to fill those gaps.  You also don’t truly understand what you have in your talent pool because you haven’t pushed it.

Feel free to disagree and tell me how wrong I am, but this is a mindset that I just can’t seem to understand.  The more I try, the more frustrated I get.  Over to you…

Posted by brentdaily on June 23, 2009 | Add a comment | Management, Promotion

Brown-Nosing, Sycophantism & Sucking Up

We’re all guilty of kissing ass at some point.  We laugh at a boss’ joke that isn’t funny.  We concede that an idea might work despite it’s obvious (to us) flaws.  But what is that ingratiating behavior costing us?

Not much as it turns out.  Despite the article being titled Workers “Sucking Up” Bad For Business: Experts the only evidence given shows what a boon it is to workers:

  • 20% more likely to land a job when ingratiating themselves to the hiring manager
  • 64% more likely to get appointed to a corporate board

Forget for a moment, what that does to a business.  What does that say about you and I that we are so easily fooled?  We think we’re smart enough to evaluate people based on merit, but obviously we’re susceptible to a little ass kissing.  This means in all of our evaluative efforts where our subjectivity comes into play (hiring, annual reviews, promotions and firing) we can’t be trusted.

photo by mallix

photo by mallix

We need more rigorous and objective measures in terms of who to hire and who to promote.  While it’s impossible and foolhardy to do away with human measure in these areas we too often think we’re God’s gift to intuition and therefore aren’t willing to allow another objective data source to interfere with our decision-making process.

So back to why this is bad for business.  Sure, group think is a problem.  Yep, it fails to reward good ideas.

But it’s also a vicious circle.  When we promote the suck ups it’s because we don’t have the self-confidence to firmly stand behind our own decisions.  Likewise, the people sucking up will be the ones who can’t get ahead on the quality of their own thoughts.  This creates an organizational weak-mindedness that dumbs down innovation and work quality.  And in a knowledge-based company that trades on its ideas that’s a deathblow.  Inertia will carry you along for a while, but the friction of the marketplace and the internal competition to see who can suck up best will grind you to a halt soon enough.

For all the leaders out there, don’t succumb to the sycophants.  If for no other reason than it points to your own obvious flaws and weaknesses.  Have a little self respect and self confidence.  You’re better than that.

Posted by brentdaily on April 20, 2009 | Add a comment | Culture, Feedback, Promotion

Make Performance Evaluations Useful

photo by sassyart

photo by sassyart

When have you ever come out of a performance evaluation more energetic and ready to kick some serious ass for your company?  Doesn’t matter if it is glowing, that one negative (because there always has to be something) will sit with you and fester.

This has been on my mind for a while.  It is, after all, a multi-month process that is only this month coming to a head for many companies.  After running across an old post from Bob Sutton, the head of Stanford’s d.school, where he wondered about the usefulness of performance evaluations it was time to chime in.

Performance evaluations, as most are implemented, could not be more detrimental to our organizations.  Period.

Showing incredible restraint, I’ll limit my rationale to ten reasons.  They,

  1. create internal competition amongst people who need to work together
  2. give manager’s an out for not giving consistent on-going feedback
  3. deliver ‘feedback’ that often comes completely out of the blue
  4. mandate we stack rank everyone on the team, even high-performing teams
  5. often use misaligned goals as a yardstick (or defunct goals established 12-months prior)
  6. are not consistent between groups under different managers
  7. are useless for promotions since those are often dictated by the manager who fights hardest for their employee
  8. often measure the interpersonal intangibles for which training and support is rarely offered
  9. reaffirm an ‘us vs. them’ mentality
  10. are highly susceptible to the failings and neuroticism of the evaluating manager
  11. bonus: are incredibly subject to recency biases

Not just useless, but counter-productive.

Try holding a weekly review instead.  Set aside 15-minutes at the end of the week for some two-way communication and focus on the individual’s own goals and their effectiveness within the team.  I’d suggest knowing and reviewing goals on both sides weekly and then answering questions that will help make your relationship more productive and keep the employee engaged.

Some starters:

  • How much progress was made in helping the employee reach their stated goals
  • How could you be more effective in helping the employee accomplish, learn, progress
  • What opportunities would the employee like to take on
  • What did you appreciate
  • What went really well
  • How effective was the team (team success or lack thereof is also the individual’s)
  • What didn’t work for you (keep this short, provide a clear example and demonstrate why it wasn’t the most effective approach)
  • What did other team member’s do that helped the employee be better

That said, if you lack sincerity, don’t come prepared to these meetings or are just looking out for number one then these will still be worthless.

Being a coach (translation: manager in today’s archaic vernacular) means prioritizing your employees and helping them reach their goals in the context of the company’s.  It’s not easy.  You’re serving two masters.  But there aren’t too many people who can do it well so it’s a huge opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves and our companies.

Some performance evaluations may work for what they were designed to do.  Regardless, I’d still suggest they be done weekly instead of annually.

Posted by brentdaily on March 12, 2009 | 2 comments so far | Coaching, Feedback, Information, Management, Promotion

Ditch Rules and Value Values

While not entirely applicable to knowledge businesses I ran across this list of workplace rules at a Chinese keyboard manufacturer via @BillCarroll.  It was too shocking, not to pass along.  Imagine if you got docked three days pay for leaving your workstation.  I’d be out a years pay by Thursday.

It got me thinking about the differences between our workplace rules and values.

Where rules are petty and only succeed in causing alienation between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ values bring everyone together. They give everyone a construct for how to succeed.  They promote the actions that will draw the shortest line from here to there.

People will behave as positively as you let them.  Everyone wants to do good work and achieve success.  If you reward results while ignoring how they were achieved behaviors will deteriorate and align with the behavior behind the falsely rewarded results.

When a company lacks strong values it often devolves into a semi-professional Lord of the Flies, everyone for himself environment.  Standing out typically comes at the expense of others.

photo by steve wampler

photo by steve wampler

If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.

While it’s never too late to rethink values, you don’t get many shots at this.  If you look around and see chaos and dysfunction it may be time to rethink your values.

Those at the top of an organization, business unit or even small team who believe change has to come from the bottom are copping out.  Values change from the top.  Period.  The top defines who succeeds and who doesn’t.  And therein is an implicit statement of values.

So as a leader ask yourself these questions to build your values foundation:

  1. What actions do you admire in others?  I like this one because it allows us to also strive to be better individuals too.
  2. What actions can you carry out each and every day without fail?  You have to walk the talk constantly.  You have to hold yourself to an impossibly high standard in order to succeed in getting these universally acknowledged and followed.
  3. What does your company require to succeed in the long-term?  Do you want to promote competition or collaboration?  Are you dependent upon new ideas?  Depending on your answers, certain values will be more apt.

Values aren’t decoration for the company walls or cute desk magnets.  Nor are they the catalyst for some feel good, touchy-feely, Kumbaya love-in.  You have to enforce them as viciously as the Chinese keyboard manufacturer seemingly does their rules.

If someone doesn’t hold the values the company holds you need to get on the same page.  Should that fail, you need to part ways.  Period.  Values are the lifeblood of an organization.  An engine doesn’t run when you mix water and oil.

Zappos 10 core values and how ardently they celebrate them are a good start for further exploring.

Posted by brentdaily on February 9, 2009 | Add a comment | Culture, Promotion, Rules, Values