Rewards SYSTEMS - It's all about the system...

I got the second highest number of hits in 4 years on my post the other day about my lack of performance (no snickers) relating to blog posting and how it wasn’t a motivation issue but a lack of ideas.

It’s funny sometimes how a throw away idea can have a much greater impact than something you agonize over and revise and edit for hours.

That post garnered a few comments.  The last few drifted from the normal “business world” application   that I intended, into the world of performance management and merit pay for teachers.  One of the commenters – E. J.(Jim) Brennan, Sr. Associate at ERI Economic Research Institute, Inc., sent me an article he had written a few (gasp – 25) years ago for the then named Personnel Journal.  Jim’s article highlighted the criteria that need to be addressed in order to have a good merit pay system for teachers.

The content in the article is as relevant today as it was 25 years ago.  

It’s About The System

After reviewing the article and briefly exchanging emails with Jim I thought that even if we had the perfect pay-for-performance (merit pay – take your pick) system in place in our education system, there would still be problems.  

And those problems are not specific to the education system - the same problems will and do exist in your organization as well.

Creating a pay for performance system for teachers leaves out a critical audience in the overall objective of improving education. Namely – the family (or substitute any social support network) and the student.  We can rev up the “motivation” by applying merit pay for the teachers but without the student and family involved it is wasted effort and money.

Burning out the engine...

If you press the accelerator on your car and give it more gas the engine will rev.  Keep it in neutral and you won’t get anywhere no matter how much you press on the pedal.  Use first gear and you’ll get somewhere but the engine will continue rev at a high rate – but your progress is limited by the gear ratio.  Ultimately, the engine will quit.  You need the engine and the transmission working in concert and efficiently, to get to your goal - they have to work within the "system."  

Same with your incentive programs.  

Think Systems Not Programs  

Provide a great incentive to your sales force and sales will come in fast and furious.  Forget to include some sort of connection to the support staff – either through rewards, communication, training – or more staff – and the outcome will be worse than if you never ran the sales incentive in the first place.

Don’t think in compartments and silos.  Think in terms of a system of interactions and interventions.  

Try to attack the issue from a more “holistic” point of view and you’ll find audiences that are critical for success – and are critical to influence – other than your initial target audience.

Motivation, incentives, rewards, influence programs don’t exist in a vacuum – they exist with a system.  The more complex the system the more thinking and analysis is needed to ensure you don’t create a bigger monster than the one you started with.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Merit Pay For Teachers - Pros & Cons (slideshare.net)
• The illogical argument against teacher merit pay (trueslant.com)

Comments

[Incentive programs]

Hi! Its very informative and useful blog.Thanks for the great info.