Re: Forget Greed, Give a Lead

[TQNELSON@aol.com]

I want to thank Aiden Ward for his insightful input, summed up in his 
question, " What is an executive compensation scheme but an appraisal system 
run by the executives themselves?"

I had been following the initial dialogue and having the same problem, a 
management/executive bonus system, at any level, is no more nor less than 
directly practicing the first 5 "deadly diseases," and directly leads to 
violating Deming's points 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. In a Deming based 
organization the executive bonus system must go.

Controversial view? Of course! Easily done? No way! As Dr. Deming once told 
me (and many others, of course), "Welcome to my world, Del. Nobody said it 
was going to be easy. The whole system has to change, and that change starts 
at the top." And the proof of how hard it is/will be? Count the number of 
organizations who have truly adopted the SoPK and the 14 Points.

As a side note, it can be done. Some years ago, in the Deming based PACER 
SHARE test of the redesign of the U.S. Civil Service (dropped after 5 years 
because it was "politically unacceptable," even if it did work [documented by 
the RAND Corp., among others]), we put in place a system (reviewed by Dr. 
Deming) that did eliminate all appraisals and bonuses at every level, for 
everybody, and replaced it with "productivity gainsharing" (PGS). This, a 
second cousin to private sector profit sharing, had everyone receive the 
identical benefit IF the organization benefited. 50% went to the 
organizational budget, 50% was divided across the work force equally, from 
the senior executive at the top, to mid-managers, to the first line 
supervisors, to the engineers, to the technicians, to the secretaries, the 
warehouse workers and the forklift drivers.

Del Nelson
American River College

When "We, the people..."
are replaced by dollars, profits, and greed,
it is time to start over.

[Moderator's Note:  Tom Coens spoke on a similar topic this past weekend
at the Deming Institute conference in Washington DC.  While no transcripts
exist, interested folks can check his book "Abolishing Performance Appraisals:
Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead" via his web site at:
http://www.abolishappraisals.com/