I typically attend a few lean Six Sigma conferences each year, and at each there’s at least one session about compensating belts. There are any number of ideas for how to do so, but they commonly include systems that provide a percentage of savings as a portion of pay, or provide a bonus for meeting target project savings. There are always issues with these pay schemes, including the fact that belt compensation may be tied to the value of projects assigned to the person or team, or to the accuracy of estimated savings when the project was assigned (an inexact science at best).
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There’s a larger fallacy with these schemes, and to explain it you must know the story of the Brownie of Blednoch by William Nicholson. You can find the original poem as well as adapted stories online, but I'll re-tell the story here in my own words:
In the town of Blednoch the people were gathered in the town square one day when they heard the sound of humming coming up the road. They looked up to see a strange-looking, bearded man approaching. As he got closer the townspeople realized he was humming, “Any work for Aiken-Drum? Any work for Aiken-Drum?” Granny, the wisest person in town, recognized the man as a “Brownie,” and explained to the townspeople that Brownies were the hardest-working people anywhere and had simple needs.
Aiken-Drum asked if the townspeople had any work for him. He said that he did not need money, clothing, or fancy living but just a warm, dry place to sleep and something warm to drink at bedtime. The town blacksmith gave Aiken-Drum a horse blanket and allowed him to sleep in a corner in his barn, and each night Granny brought him a warm drink. From that day on, the townspeople were amazed at the deeds he performed, often without being asked. A farmer found his sheep had been led into the barn just before a storm. The town church finally got built. One sick resident had Aiken-Drum show up, clean her entire house, and cook soup for her. The baker found his wagon wheel repaired on the morning he was to deliver goods to town. Even the kids loved Aiken-Drum, who often built fires, sang songs, and played games with them.
Everyone is extremely pleased with the Brownie’s work except Miss Daisy, who finds it unfair that Aiken-Drum isn’t better compensated for his outstanding work. The other townspeople tried to convince Miss Daisy that Brownies are driven by the love of their work for others and not by material things, but she could not be swayed. One evening, while he is out working, she leaves him some new pants.
In the morning, Aiken-Drum is gone and never seen again.
If you’re trying to assign a specific dollar figure to the work your belts do, you are Miss Daisy.
In Daniel Kahnemann’s highly recommended book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), the difference between social norms and business norms are explained quite clearly. One example helping illustrate the difference occurs when you need assistance to assemble a new shed. Ask a close friend for help and he or she will likely give you an entire Saturday morning. Ask the same friend and offer $20, and that friend will likely come up with an excuse and feel insulted that you think his or her Saturday morning and energy are only worth $20. You can’t put a price on the motivating factors behind the hard work.
You see, the best work comes from those driven by something other than the material compensation.
I’m not suggesting that we avoid paying belts—of course there’s a market value for the job they do and they should be compensated fairly. But if we want belts to work like Brownies, instead of expending time and energy on fine-tuning a bonus and compensation system tied to the tasks they do, we’d be much better off considering what drives the best of the best and how we can provide that. Here are some examples:
• If the belt’s job requires regular travel to work on projects, make that travel less stressful by allowing some personal choice in flights and accommodations, or simplify the expense-reporting procedures. If any travel is extended, offer to pay airfare for family and offer appropriate accommodations.
• Offer the belt several project options and allow him or her to choose to work on the project that best aligns with the person’s interests.
• The best belts are driven by a passion to reach for perfection, and a disdain for waste and defects—so don’t assign projects in an area where management or process owners will not appreciate this kind of striving. Several programs I'm familiar with use a pull system, where managers have to ask that a project be done in their area.
• Many belts feel that their work is very important to the success of the organization but isn’t noticed by many outside of the improvement program and the areas in which they’ve done projects. A high-level executive personally contacting the belt and expressing gratitude AND familiarity with what a particular project accomplished will achieve a level of employee satisfaction that a bonus cannot.
These are just some examples. What matters most is that fair compensation is offered; after that there’s no more haggling over money. Instead, focus on the real drivers behind the belt’s work and satisfy those to the best of your ability. I know of no organization that has created Brownies through financial compensation and bonuses, but know of many driven belts who do great work because their company values what they are trying to achieve and tries to remove all barriers to that success.
Turn your belts into Brownies and you’ll hear humming in the halls!
Comments
Great article, Joel!
Excellent article. I remember many heated arguments in Deming seminars (and other seminars we taught in the Navy, based on Deming) when people found that most of their reward programs were actually barriers to productivity and joy in work. This is something that we've known (in the sense that there has been plenty of research to back it up), but putting it into practice has been very difficult. Free, Perfect and Now by Rob Rodin tells about how he got rid of incentive schemes for his sales force at Marshall Industries. On the day he implemented that, some of his competitors gave their people a day off to celebrate the coming demise of Marshall, but a year later, they were the industry leader.
I have to ask, though...pants? Aiken-Drum? Is there a particularly bad pun's punchline lurking somewhere? It sounds like a setup for one of those jokes like "the Beer that made Milt Famey walk us."
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