First published 2017. I was talking to an organization where individual performance ratings had taken on too much importance. They never tried the experiment, but I’m curious what would have happened if they had tried.
While this post is From the Archives I listed it under Incentives. I’m being reminded of all the work I did then & subsequently on incentive systems for engineers. I’m convinced that our local Google-copying maximum is not the best we can do.
There is a story in The Goal about a Scout troop on a hike. The first day, the implicit goal is to get the first person to camp. Everyone is left to get to camp at their own speed. One person is slow and out of shape, so everyone has to go search in the gathering dusk. The next day, the troop leader decides that the completion criterion should be when the last person arrives at camp.
Chaos ensues. The fast hikers go charging ahead and have to be pulled back. The troop leader changes the order so the slowest hiker is in front. Frustration, but then magic happens. The faster hikers channel their frustration into helping the slowest hiker go faster–unload their pack, make sure they take proper rests, help with foot care. The troop goes faster and everybody gets to camp in the early afternoon, together.
Thought Experiment
I remembered this story during a conversation with a former Marine in Afghanistan who said, “There is no individual success without mission success.” I proposed a thought experiment based on this statement:
Teams get ratings too
No individual can get a rating higher than their team’s rating
No individual success without mission success.
Consequences
The discussion of this thought experiment surprised me. I was hoping that the consequence would be that stronger members of the team would help weaker members be more successful so the team would be more successful. Most of the comments were about perverse incentives that would make the organization as a whole less successful:
Good performers would flock together, leaving many teams under-talented.
Good performers would plow ahead, hoping to carry their teams to success, and try to dump poor performers.
Junior engineers would avoid long-term projects that are practically guaranteed middling ratings for 2-3 review cycles. They want a big win & a promotion. [ed: this was an up-or-out organization].
Conclusion
It’s called an “experiment” because you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Every set of incentives has consequences, including the incentives we have now and any set of incentives we replace them with. I’m beginning to appreciate how straightforward the consequences of “everybody has a pile of illiquid equity” was, but that’s not a state of affairs we can recreate.
Someone (out yourself in the comments if you’d like) donated the title of this note: “there is no ‘WE’ in ‘IC’”. I wonder if a change of vocabulary would help a little. Managers “support” teams. Maybe if we changed “individual contributor” to “team member” that would help?
I definitely think the change of vocabulary is not only potentially helpful, it's critical.
In the teams I've led (and even some I haven't, officially) in recent years, I've worked to squash dehumanizing vocabulary like "individual contributor" ("teammate" being my replacement of choice for that one). I've never been in management, but those seem to be the people most likely to use vocabulary like that. In fact, I don't ever remember an actual team member referring to himself or teammates as "contributors." Hmm, wonder why that is...
Similarly, when I hear HR (yuck) or management refer to people as "resources" it makes me cringe and lose some amount of respect for the person saying it.
It rather saddens me, but I think that if team success is the measure, it does make sense for teams to lose less-effective members and take on more-effective ones. (I freely state that teams may not recognize the value of certain members or member types, and might make mistakes in this process. But I think the "team success" measure means that they will try to get rid of perceived under-performers and take on perceived high performers.
I do not have an answer, other than eating the rich. And I'm not sure that would help. :)