Saturday, August 15, 2009

Effort vs. results

Question: should you reward people for their efforts, or for results?

This sounds very theoretical, but it can cause big dilemmas. When my daughter makes me a drawing that I don't think is very good, for example, I will thank her for the gift, and try to find something positive to say about it, but I will not exclaim "what a lovely drawing!" if it is obviously below her normal standard (or far below that of children in her age group) for two reasons: (1) because children need to learn to distinguish between what is good enough, and what is not, and the only way to learn this is feedback from others, and (2) because false praise (which my children will certainly recognize as such, given how terrible I am at lying) teaches children that insincerity is normal, which creates another, bigger problem down the road.

So I will probably try to tell her - with the necessary diplomacy - where the picture might be improved, i.e. I lean towards the results side. According to what I have been reading lately about improvement processes, it is probably better to focus more on the process and not the results, but I am probably too old-fashioned to do that.

But how about adults? Where I work, we have a punch-clock that keeps track of our presences and absences, the rule being that you clock in when you arrive in the morning, clock out for lunch, then clock back in after lunch, and clock out again when you leave. All of this is designed to make sure that everyone works (or at least is physically in the office) during a certain minimum number of hours each month. Which is basically a measurement of effort.

Some colleagues argue that the number of hours should not matter, because they can finish all their work quicker than others doing the same type of work by working faster/harder/smarter, and they are not happy to have to sit in the office just because someone else is not as efficient/smart/hardworking as they are. Which reminds me of a beautiful episode of Dilbert, where someone yet again wins the employee of the month award because of all the hours of unpaid overtime she spent compensating her own inefficiency.

As far as I am concerned, the "reward" for minimum effort and standard work is the paycheck, and people that produce results that exceed the norm get something extra (a compliment, a raise in pay, a promotion). I would definitely not reward extra effort that is counter-productive. Which is not to say I would penalize the above-cited "employee of the month", because it is up to management to guard against the worst mismatches between skill and responsibility. So instead of giving her the award, the pointy-haired boss should give up his bonuses.

If I ever get to be a manager, I won't have that problem: my hair is not pointy.

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