How to set up and run an Executive Incentive Compensation Program.

Each year, a well-run organization’s leadership completes a planning and budgeting process.  Achievement of the resulting annual business plan is dependent on each organizational unit meeting or exceeding its established goals as part of that plan. This requires that individual leaders take ownership of their part of the plan.

The objective of the Executive Incentive Compensation Program (EICP) is to allow executives who meet or exceed annual performance goals, both financial and non-financial, to participate in the organization’s overall success.  The more a given individual or group is responsible for the organization’s success, the greater their share of participation in the rewards.  Participation in the program is an important career milestone.

Participants

Executives with significant scope and scale of responsibility for achieving an identifiable portion of the organization’s financial plan and who are, and who are expected to continue to be, employees in good standing are eligible to participate in the program.  All staff proposed for inclusion are reviewed and approved by the Core Leadership Group.

Participation is not required.  Continue reading

How to make sure every member of your top group gets at least one thing done right.

CEOs should consider the following when assigning tasks to leadership team members:

  • Members of the leadership team are likely to be the most capable people in the organization and therefore among the most important to deploy optimally.
  • Each needs to be especially clear about what is most important for them to do and then spend the lion-share of their time doing it.
  • If something is important to do then someone important ought to be in charge of getting it done.  Continue reading

How to contract and govern for success with each team member.

One of the leader’s most important jobs is to get and stay clear about what it is that he or she is counting on from each team member.  Once the leader is clear, the message must be communicated to the team member.  Often, the leader fails to engage in a rich communication apparently in favor of assuming that team members are somehow supposed to figure out for themselves exactly what is expected of them.

Click the photo below to watch a five-minute video of a supervisor and team member making many common mistakes that make it  tough for things to come out right:

How many poor supervisory actions do you see in  this video?

The steps detailed in this post make explicit a conversation that otherwise plays-out inside of the heads of those involved.  When the conversation is explicit the leader and team member get on the same page and dramatically increase the odds of high-performance and fulfilled expectations.

Contract: Get clear about what you want from each person. Continue reading