Indiv. & Team Compensation LO12746

andreww@petronas.com.my
Tue, 4 Mar 1997 08:29:09 -0800

Replying to LO12730 --

Teamwork Towards What Purpose?

A car was stuck in mud on a country road in a village. The driver, a
visitor to the country site, called for help. 10+ villagers came with
ropes, wooden planks, bricks, etc. They tried out various methods and
strategies, they shouted together (in order to mobilize the team force)
and pulled...... The car was back on the road.

It was a great TEAMWORK at that moment. All the team members had a Shared
Vision : "To help the visitor's car back on the road". They had the
satisfaction that the mission was accomplished.

The visitor was so grateful and touched. He offered a very large sum of
money as reward to the villagers, and asked them to share among
themselves. A real problem and fight erupted on the distribution of the
large reward. Each claimed how difficult his effort was, or what
sacrifice, what creative ideas, what leadership, etc. etc.

The visitor realized that this new problem was much bigger than his car
problem.

Now the Shared Vision of the group (no more a team!) is "How big a portion
of the cake must I get? Surely my portion should not be smaller than so
and so..."

In any typical organization, such reward distribution system is already
casted in stone : CEO with millions $ a year, an operator with a fraction
that of CEO a year.

In theory, many all know that no achievement, no accomplishment, be it
small and temporary can be made without some sort of team work, yet unlike
the villagers who could argue and fight over the reward distribution
system, silent majority in organization accepted the whole thing as fact
of life in their heads, but not in their hearts.

When the organization Shared Vision is confined to a squirrel store type
of reward distribution system, where is room for a larger Shared Vision
for a real TEAMWORK TOWARDS A GREATER PURPOSE? Should we then also get
caught in the squirrel store arguing over compensation?

Regards

Andrew Wong
Organisation Observer and Thinker
Homepage : http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5621

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andreww@petronas.com.my
 


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