What are you getting paid for?

Organizations are made of two kinds of people: People who are compensated for Competency and People, who are compensated for change.

How am I defining a competency person? People who define their contribution by their functional competency and make themselves valuable by showing improvements in their job every year.

These guys will turn up and say at the end of the year “We executed our plan well and clocked 22% improvement /growth. We’ll do this better next year and am confident of 20% gains again. I am a top performer.”

Change drivers? People who don’t define their contribution as their competency but instead their ‘delta’ value as people in a business that needs to get better.  These guys will say “well, I changed our working model and we got 20% growth. Next year, we should go up/down/sideways in the chain and see if we can change things there to get 40% next year. I am your best bet to do this and I am a top performer.”

What’s different in the two is an ability to step back from your competency and work across and question surrounding elements to drive the business better (as opposed to just his process).

Let’s take this case for a sales person. A competent sales person will manage his territory well, nurture his channel relationships and keep them interested and their working capital locked in and growing. Occasionally, he will turn a blind eye to his dealers shipping product off into another sales managers territory. Hey – its not his fault that the sales guy there isn’t running a tight ship.

A change driver sales guy will do all this, but he will keep trying out new ways to sell more. He will say ‘can we bill my biggest customer directly? It will bring us more business.” Or he will motivate his dealer to open two more stores and get more organized. One of our sales guys set up a crude consumer referral program for 300 key consumers in his territory and it was years before we even got around to finding out.  We are now considering scaling it up to a 2 Mn $, 50,000 consumer program.

HBR has this to say about change agents  “ People who bridged disconnected groups and individuals were more effective at implementing dramatic reforms, while those with cohesive networks were better at instituting minor changes.”

I love that. And if you think for a second about how and why change agents are bridging disconnected individuals  - its with a purpose to drive dramatic change to improve business as a whole– not just a sole function or a competency. Would it matter then if this person were HR or IT or Legal?  Wouldn’t you want this person doing similar things at more senior levels for bigger impact? And then, wouldn’t you, by definition, be paying and promoting this person more? 

So, what needs to change? Our communication of a ‘role’ to a potential new hire. Stop giving Job descriptions and start giving out change targets.

If you are an employee who’s wondering why promotion cycles are skipping you, ask your self what have you fundamentally changed for the business? Am not talking about what’s gotten better – am sure your collateral is now better designed, and reaches sales teams at least it in the middle of selling season (as opposed to after its over). What have you changed? Do your sales teams now have a way to get their collateral printed and shipped themselves?

Let's talk about impact on compensation.

Too many good people wonder why they don't get promoted enough or get high appraisal ratings often enough. And I can understand that. Here is some change related perspective - you don't get rated highly for just doing your job well. Even if it is very well.

You are still high on only the competency line. For you to score and score big, we need to demonstrate change. Purposeful, directed , positive change. Change that means the system works with less dependence on people. Or lesser people. Or has an expanded growth boundary.

While this is almost certainly a better paid skill set, it is totally okay to not want to invest the effort in driving change necessarily. It doesn't mean you are not valued. It doesn't mean you can't do it. It may be that you are not motivated to.  You may be investing the delta effort in your personal life with your family or your interests. Just to manage expectations though, you will be called a successful performer but probably not a top talent at work. And that's okay. You are being paid for keeping the lights on. Someone has to.

Disclaimer: All the images shown are illustrative - and not meant to be necessarily the right examples of what's higher order and what isn't. Apply them to a situation of your choice and see where you bucket yourself.