Jim thought some of Pfeffer’ s points might have made his points more credible, but decided the biggest problem he faced selling his ideas to Buchanan was that probably no company president would accept in just one sitting a proposal to turn their company topsy-turvy. After all, Jim too had rejected Harold’ s concepts the first time that Jim had heard them.
Enough time had passed that the points he’ d tried to make with Buchanan should have started to sink in, thought Jim. If that were true, the time would be ripe for Jim to revisit the topic with Buchanan. Jim decided to write him an e-mail, cite some of Pfeffer’ s points, and see if Buchanan could be swayed.
Dear David,
I realize that our last meeting did not go well and I take the blame for failing to make my arguments sufficiently convincing— but I still hope you will give them some consideration.
Many of the gaps in my logic are topics that are well covered in Jeffrey Pfeffer’ s The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. While your son was attending Stanford he may even have attended classes held by this respected academic, who is the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
It was Pfeffer’ s book that made me realize that I’ d asked for a complete transformation in management’ s mindset overnight without considering the barriers to rapid management change.
In Pfeffer’ s words,“ It is often easier and substantially more seductive to manage something— a strategy— that is analyzable and can be reasonably readily changed, as contrasted with dealing with the day-to-day details of operations and implementation. Those problems are less glamorous, less interesting, but more importantly, much harder to solve.”
Problems that fall into the category of“ less glamorous, less interesting( and)… much harder to solve” cannot be ignored simply because they are less attractive, says Pfeffer.“ Managers are always well advised to solve the real problem— not the one they would prefer to solve or are able to solve.”
Solving the“ real problem” requires us to accept an answer that takes us in a direction that intuition would not. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing for Sherlock Holmes said it best:“ When all of the other possibilities have been exhausted, whatever remains, no matter how farfetched, is the solution.” As hard as it is to accept, when all the salespeople’ s sales numbers are part of a system, there is no statistical difference in the values of their contributions to sales. Different compensation for the same contribution is a proven recipe for disaster, and“ all the other possibilities have been exhausted,” so the only remaining choice is salary.
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Pfeffer identifies another fundamental flaw in incentive / commission systems that I had missed:“ One occasionally hears that incentives or surveillance and control( or some combination of the two) can substitute for trust by affecting the environment in such a way that people do the right thing. But this view is naïve, for incentives and controls work only for behaviors that can be