Zeppo rocked
back in his chair, viewed the calendar on the wall and considered his first two
weeks on the job. Then, looking over at our
superintendent and his assistant, Zeppo let fly with a tactical comment,
"I like working here, this is a great crew, so much better than where I
worked before. Too bad you don't pay a
little more so a guy could live right, I'd have this program up to date in no
time".
That day a request for a
wage increase for Zeppo arrived on my desk.
I gave Ace,
our superintendent a call, "What's up with the pay request? Zeppo has only
been here a couple weeks, yes?."
Ace's voice
carried an evangelical intensity over the phone, "True, but I'm going to
lose him if I can't pay more. If he was
making more money I think he'd be more focused, he'd get this software
straightened out, I really need him motivated."
I ran my
hand over my face in that time honored self rub of stress relief and replied, "Not
a good idea Ace, wage increases work after performance, not before."
Ace replied,
"No, really, I need this, I need this guy to be motivated."
I made another run at the truth, "Money
isn't a primary motivator, Ace."
The
intensity in Ace's voice increased, "Sure it is, get a pay increase and a guy will really buckle down and work."
Almost
every one of us who work for a living wants to believe this . . . but it just isn't
true. To his credit, Ace was persistent,
he really believed . . . that's important, so I agreed to Ace's request, not because
it would change Zeppo's behavior . . . I was sure it would not, but because it
would reinforce Ace's behavior. Mistakes
made while working hard, trying hard, trying to do what's good of the company,
are valuable experiences. Ace was about
to have a valuable experience, I just didn't want it to be too expensive.
So I said,
"OK, Boss Man, come over and pick up the approval, but when you do, leave on
my deck in a sealed envelope, inside put your prediction on Zeppo's performance in 30
days. I'll do the same, and we'll see
who's prediction is most accurate. The
loser buys lunch at Tex-Mex."
I really
enjoyed that lunch at Tex-Mex. My
prediction simply stated what overwhelming research has shown, which was that
the wage increase would improve Zeppo's behavior for 2 weeks, after which his
performance would quickly drop even lower than before the wage increase.
Well, Zeppo moved
on, and Ace, to his credit, quickly understood how he could be using his wage
budget more effectively. No more
throwing money at bad work in the hope of a magical, alchemical transmutation of bad performance
into good. Money is a "keeper",
if used unwisely it will keep bad workers just as effectively as great
workers. Use it to keep the good ones.
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