Editor's Note: Is your compensation program a breeding ranch for dead horses? Jacque Vilet rides to the rescue with advice for those out-of-date, no-longer-relevant policies and practices!
“When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” ---- Dakota tribal wisdom
Simple common sense don’t you think? However, truth be told, the world of business is full of dead horses.
What’s the definition? It’s any program, project, policy, or established way of doing things that is out-of-date, irrelevant and not in sync with a company’s strategy. Surprisingly, management often tries to keep the dead horse alive.
Instead of “dismounting”, management tries (as a last ditch effort) to revive the dead horse in question.
Perhaps you have seen some of these attempts in your company. For each business example, I've created one for how it might look in Compensation:
1) This dead horse is too big to fail. The company has sunk too much money in the project/product/service and it’s cheaper and easier to spend a little more money to fix it than it is to cut it. It’s called the "sunk-cost effect", otherwise known as throwing good money after bad.
Compensation: A large, very expensive _____ compensation study (fill in the blank) has taken six months so far with a lot of money spent and no end in sight. No one believes it’s relevant anymore --- including you --- but you’re afraid of cutting it and risk management’s wrath for money and time that’s been wasted.
2) Visit other companies to see how they ride dead horses. After looking at several companies, management comes up with a “best practices” model to use in resolving their dead horse problem. This is in spite of the fact that the companies aren’t in the same industry and don’t have the same business strategy
Compensation: In an effort to decide whether to offer tuition assistance you do a benchmarking study. Companies reviewed don’t offer it so you decide your company won’t either. One important difference --- the average age of employees in the companies reviewed is 45; your company’s average age is 28.
3) This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse. This is the CEO’s pet project/program and has been a major reason for the company’s success in the past. To end it s/he would have to reverse his/her position with the Board by admitting that it’s no longer relevant.
Compensation: The company has always used an anniversary date approach for its annual review/merit program. However now the company really needs to set employee performance goals in sync with FY business goals. No one in Compensation has had experience with focal review programs and has deeply embedded biases in favor of the anniversary date approach.
4) Engage a consultant to study the dead horse. Management is convinced a certain program/process needs to continue as is, but no one internally wants to go against the Board who recommends it be killed. So management hires a outside consultant and drops hints of further business if s/he provides a recommendation to the Board that the program be continued.
Compensation: Compensation has been asked to develop a recognition reward program for all employees and management is requiring that the same rewards apply to all employees worldwide. You know that awarding $50 to an employee in Japan would not be considered appropriate. So you hire a consultant who recommends that the actual reward be decided at the country level. Now you can deliver this message to management with no fear of retribution.
5) And when all else fails, promote the dead horse to senior management. Maybe s/he won’t be noticed there!
We have to selectively abandon the past. Not everything --- just those programs/processes, etc. that are no longer relevant. If we focus too much on the past and present, we’ll lose touch or be left behind when the future arrives.
Do any of our readers have an example of dead horses in their companies? In Compensation?
*The 10 underlined dead horse statements belong to Vijay Govindarajan. The explanation of each one is my contribution.
**Please note: Absolutely no horses were injured in the writing of this post. I certainly don’t advocate attempting to ride a dead horse, nor do I advocate working in a company that attempts to replicate said state.
Jacque Vilet, President of Vilet International, has over 20 years’ experience in Global Human Resources with major multinationals such as Intel, Texas Instruments and Seagate Technology. She has managed both local/ in-country national and expatriate programs and has been an expatriate twice during her career. Jacque has the following certifications: CCP, GPHR, HCS and SWP as well as a B.S. and M.S in Psychology plus an MBA. She belongs to SHRM, Human Capital Institute and World at Work. Jacque has been a speaker in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and is a regular contributor to various HR and talent management publications.
Thanks for reprinting Jacque's classic, Ann. I've seen more "dead horses" than I could count over the last 50 years.
Still remember the incisive 1971 book or article titled "How to Keep Your Job When All Around You Are Losing Theirs", counseling snuggling up to the biggest money-losing long-term project investment of the enterprise. No one will dare admit it failed/died years ago.
Watch the great cynical movie "The Pentagon Wars" for the fictionalized version of the true story about the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The M247 Sergeant York project was an inverse example: an excellent weapon cancelled due to media mockery after an innocent public debacle.
Expensive failures are embarrassing, so such "dead horses" tend to be hidden in the locked barn as long as possible. But their stench is hard to hide.
Posted by: E. James (Jim) Brennan | 12/11/2020 at 06:01 PM