How do you punish effort? Or rather, how can you punish effort? In two rather atypical cases, I find myself with a pair of beaver-like gentlemen who must have a clinical condition barring them from saying no (if there isn't a name for that, they should come up with one). Their everyday work ethic is to be applauded and used as the standard to which their coworkers should strive. But from an external perspective, if you decouple the process from the outcome, you can see an obvious lack of results, because the extra mile walked ended up at the wrong destination. So then comes review time, when ultimately the individual is looking for acknowledgement of who they are (sadly their identity is often wrapped up in their profession). And to everyone's dismay, they are chided for poor choices leading them to practically ignore higher priority tasks. But what choice do I have?
As children, we hear parents and teachers preaching that as long as we did our best, that would be enough. But what they failed to tell us is that there's a world out there that demands results and could care less about what we did and how much work it took to get there. That's not to say we should whip our children into proverbial shape, but it does seem a bit counterproductive to build up their self-esteem only to let the real world beat them down.
Okay, I admit that's a cynical way to look at it, but when I myself am measured by my results, how can I allow my direct reports to stray the course?
More often than not, the extra money ain't worth it.
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