>I've always objected to the analogy of the pig being committed and
>the hen being involved. This suggests to me that commitment is a
>matter of exhortation and I personally don't like the implications
>nor find them very powerful in practice. Merely cute.
The issue is not the pig, the hen, or any level of exhortation. The issue
is in the level of interest one has in the project. I submit, a pig has
more of a personal interest in the breakfast. While the model is
incomplete it is more than cute. One could have easily related a
differing, less pastoral, model. Perhaps the comparison of a consultant
and owner is more germane. The consultant can lay all the eggs he/she
wants to but the owner is personally involved. If the advice is wrong,
the consultant may lose a client but the owner may lose his/her business.
IMHO, one gateway factor in providing incentives or eliminating
disincentives is to address what the interests are of the employee.
Perhaps a consultant can take the hen view of things that it is very
important to do it this way or that. If the consultant is wrong, the
employee, seeing things from a different perspective, could take an
adverse course - like leaving. Or if the structure of the compensation
package were changed, perhaps take even a more destructive course. As
practitioners, we can't be disinterested and our entire lives are at
stake.
As an employer, I have an absolute passion to help our employees care for
the things that matter. I don't believe that providing them a sense of
'safe harbor' helps them care about the things that matter the most. By
structuring the business such that the people they serve can make a choice
about their service, to accept or reject, and by compensating those who do
better by better compensation, I believe that they will care more about
that service.
I have yet to learn of any model, cute or otherwise, which provides data
showing that people who are paid to do the things which are important will
somehow do less well than those who are not. How do we make it important
to them - pay them for it!
-- Tom Burke Ramona, California toburke@cts.com