Whether it’s time to put together a plan or align incentives for a team against it, how many pieces are there to your puzzle? From both a tops down and bottoms up perspective, how clearly can impact be measured and progress tracked?

• What are the company goals?
• What are the team goals?
• What are the individual goals?
• How do those goals align against individual incentives?
• How can we communicate to drive better alignment?

All big hairy audacious questions to ask. Can you feel the complexity compound as they hang in the air? Whether it’s compensation or alignment to take two examples, the road is fraught with peril:

Compensation

In a winding effort to incentive the right behaviors and protect against edge cases, managers may be pushed toward a compensation model where they lose the original purpose. Check out this example:

Goal: incentive growth & retention

Model:
Quarterly Revenue Growth vs. Target x Retention vs. Target x
Managed Revenue (+/- Size Relative to Region*) – 50%
+
Regional Growth Rate vs. Target – 50%

Outcome: no one having a damn clue how they’re doing

*Factors in the size of individual managed revenue relative to a larger region. Larger managed revenue is penalized less for growth rates below an average. Smaller managed revenue with higher growth rates is brought in line to the average that is more attainable off of a smaller base.

Alignment

Has a recent inventory been done of all the tools used to facilitate alignment on your team? E-Mail, Slack, Dropbox, Google Docs, Salesforce? You’ll know there’s a problem when the second hand is needed for counting…

How about documentation around which to use when? Are systems integrated? Multiple failure points exist when attempting to transfer correct and complete information from one tool to the next. Like a high tech game of telephone, simplistically illustrated here:

Does reproducing a breakdown or measuring productivity call for multiple report pulls and v lookups? There should be an easier way. When incentives seem misaligned or communication breaks down, things are just too complicated.

As you head out to conquer the world with a merry band of marauders – keep it simple, stupid.