EIM and SPM system and related commentary presented by Canidium

Goals under attack!

Friday, January 15th, 2010 | Compensation Plans, Goal setting | No Comments

Heard an interesting piece on NPR this evening (transcript here). One of the participants, Lisa Ordonez, a management professor at the University of Arizona was citing some examples of what she calls “Goals Gone Wild.” Here is what Ordonez had to say about a corporate goal of GM’s to achieve 29 percent market share:

And this led to, for them, a focus away from profitability. And to achieve this goal myopically. Now I’m not going to say that that goal was the entire downfall of GM, but obviously strict adherence to goals can cause these kinds of problems.

Also in the piece Ordonez describes how parental incentives to their school aged children to achieve all A’s have lead to “unethical behavior like cheating on an exam or having someone write a paper for you.” Something to think about I suppose. What bothered me about the story was the sentiment that goals are bad by nature. I didn’t catch the title of the story until I went looking for the transcript –”It’s not always good to create goals.” Yes, the title seems to support that sentiment.
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The Perfect Gift, a Christmas Bonus

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 | SPM, bonus | No Comments

In recent years the “Christmas Bonus” has been a species in decline. Once an American staple, it went out of favor for a couple of reasons.

First, you couldn’t call it the Christmas Bonus anymore if you wanted to be politically correct. And unfortunately, “Year End Bonus” or “Holiday Bonus” just doesn’t have the same cache with most of us.

Second, and more importantly, the argument began amongst compensation professionals that an obligatory bonus at the end of the year doesn’t really affect behavior. The goal of compensation is to incent employees’ performance. If they get a bonus every year just for showing up, where’s the motivation?
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The Dangerous Power of Pay

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | Compensation Plans, EIM, SPM | No Comments

One aspect of compensation that has always fascinated me is the psychology of motivating people to do what you want. People are motivated by a lot of different things and there’s a lot of literature around that. However, the common belief is that money is number one and always will be, especially amongst sales people. I’ve always bought into that. I’ve advised clients to simplify compensation plans down to where they know what to sell, how much to sell, and how much money they’ll make when they achieve their goals.

“If you want something sold, put a quota on it.” I always say.

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Callidus Introduces SPM Community: OpenCommissions

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | Callidus, EIM, SPM, User communities | No Comments

Callidus Software announced the launch of OpenCommissions a community sales performance management (SPM) website today with this press release. Featured are SPM related forums, a wiki, blogs, and even sales compensation management Excel and Word templates. Essentially what Callidus has done to create OpenCommissions is to make public parts of TrueConnect, the community site previously exclusively available to verified Callidus customers. Today’s visitors will find some of the content immediately available upon arrival; additional content is available after a free registration and finally, some content is still restricted to only Callidus customers. › Continue reading

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