They don’t really require much more than putting some concrete form around esoteric, cerebral conversations and ideas. Come up with a framework to measure performance, then have conversations about how you apply that framework. Sure, with some creativity, alignment, and good organisation you should be able to employ principles of product management to take that idea and turn it into a reality.
This bit, the last bit, that’s where the rubber hits the road. It’s haaard. It’s hard for a few reasons:
- It requires you to actually do something that has external, often irreversible outcomes,
- It’s logic behind the numbers is important, and will be scrutinised by every eye that sees it,
- Everyone in your Executive Team needs to buy into it, everyone in your Management Team needs to understand it, and
- It will touch your company’s bottom line in a meaningful way.
Forecasting, budgeting, and applying performance to actual compensation is challenging. But it’s not so challenging that great People Operations and Operations leaders should avoid facing it. In fact, it’s all the more the kind of challenge you should rise to. This kind of problem is what your role is all about. The reason so many companies shy away from having both an effectively repeatable and transparent approach to performance based pay is because of the above four challenges. However, the reasons to do it are overwhelming: