As Discussed...

Matt McFarlane and I met earlier this year on opposite sides of a debate about pay for performance. His team argued in favor and won the audience vote 62 to 38, and a week later he published a piece saying he had never been a fan of it. That opening carries the rest of the conversation: what pay for performance sets out to do, why the mechanism breaks at nearly every link in the chain, and what companies use instead once they stop treating an annual rating as the engine of everything.Matt runs FNDN, a compensation consultancy for startups based in Australia. He built the pay structures at Oyster that carried the company from 200 to 600 people across 70 countries, and he now hosts the FNDN Series podcast and newsletter and runs the Startup People Summit, a one-day APAC event for people leaders inside high-growth companies. We cover the companies that have taken negotiation out of pay entirely, the grip that benchmark data holds over compensation decisions, the tension between fairness and individual pay in collaborative work, what happens to the manager's role as AI absorbs more of the coordination, and the practical side of leaving a salaried job to consult.What we coveredWhy Matt argued for pay for performance in a debate and against it a week laterThe three percent merit budget, and what the annual salary survey roundups tell usRewarding a standout year with money, or using it to raise the standard across a teamWhy Matt left the job he enjoyed most in his career to build a compensation practiceHow his client window moved from 50 employees to 100 or 150, and what breaks at that sizeBenchmarking as a source of cognitive closure, and the living wage argument underneath itRunn's single rate per role, and the salary trajectory that made their people harder to poachCarta, 37signals, Buffer, and PayPal as models that remove the negotiationFairness as a relative judgment, and how quickly a good salary becomes an unfair oneWhy US companies resist narrow bands, and what wide bands say about trust in hiringThe bad hire label, the myth of the A player, and where responsibility for performance sitsThe player coach, the stretched leader, and ClickUp's million-dollar salary bandsWhat Matt tells anyone thinking about leaving a salaried role to consultPeopleMatt McFarlane, founder of FNDNRowan Savage, co-founder and CTO of RunnAndrea LaRowe of 37signals, a previous guest on this showBooksExtreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif BabinArticles"How to Become a HR Consultant," Matt McFarlane, FNDN Series #7https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/p/how-to-become-a-hr-consultantOrganizationsFNDN, Startup People Summit, Oyster, Runn, Carta, 37signals, Buffer, PayPal, Zappos, ClickUp, Buurtzorg, Gallup, RadfordFind MattLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmcfarlane/FNDN: https://www.fndn.com.au/FNDN Series podcast and newsletter: https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/Startup People Summit: https://startuppeoplesummit.com/Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.

Dylan Soopramania is a creative director and consultant whose work spans the UK, Australia, and North America, with campaigns for Coca-Cola, EA Sports, KitKat, Hellmann's, and Google. He designed the covers for all three of my books and the branding for this podcast. We have known each other for thirty years, and this is the first episode recorded in person and the first under the Disengaged name.Advertising is the one industry where creativity is the product, which makes it the sharpest test of the argument in Close the Gap. Dylan's rule for creative leads is to protect the potential of the idea: push it to the point where you and your trusted partners feel uncomfortable, because ideas get killed in internal conversations long before anyone learns where they could have gone. The same problem sits inside every business that needs to innovate. If people do not feel safe suggesting things that might get shot down, they play it down the middle. Dylan's account of what happened when I stopped chasing him on the cover, that the more I backed off the more responsible he felt, is the whole book in one sentence.What we covered:What a creative director does, and why brands rent a creative's tone of voiceHow the Close the Gap cover came aboutGood briefs, bad briefs, and Hellmann's sneakers made from food wastePresenting irrational ideas to rational peopleMad Men is dead: culture now informs marketingProtecting the potential of the ideaPixar's brain trust and the Overton windowCulture fit as hiring people who look and sound like youWhy the modern company still runs on a hierarchy inherited from the church and the factoryThe KitKat catapultFocus groups, market data, and the sea of samenessThe manager as emulsifierTrust, control, purpose, and tensionWhy asking people to keep doing what they do well kills the sparkFreelance versus full timeLeaving Dylan alone: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in one exampleProactive work, gold wall sessions, and 3M's fifteen percent timeExecutive pay, the C-suite, and the role of profitPeople: Steve Hey (Dylan's creative partner), Dart Lindsley (Work for Humans), Jessie Zwaan (job, career, calling), Amy Wrzesniewski, Aaron Dignan, Rensis Likert, Abraham Maslow, Joseph Overton, Paul Buchheit, Jack Welch, Steve JobsBooks: Close the Gap and What Pay Costs (James Seechurn), Purpose and Work (Jessie Zwaan), Brave New Work (Aaron Dignan), Colin Splodge and The Sizzledodge (Steve Hey and Dylan Soopramania)Organizations: Pixar, Coca-Cola, KitKat / J. Walter Thompson Sydney, Hellmann's / Ogilvy, Banana Boat, Google / The Hallway, 3M, General Electric, Patagonia, Buurtzorg, Nucor, Handelsbanken, Haier, AFL-CIO, MSCIFind Dylan on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dylan-soopramania-5a439223 and on Instagram at @dyl_soop. KitKat catapult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD3DUt4eZZw. Close the Gap: https://amzn.to/4x4FAZ6Music licensed through Soundstripe.Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH

Arie Kruglanski is one of the most cited social psychologists alive, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and a co-founder of START, the national center for the study of terrorism. He gave the field two ideas that shape this conversation: the need for cognitive closure, our drive to resolve ambiguity and settle on an answer, and significance quest theory, the claim that the need to matter sits beneath much of what we do. This episode takes both into the workplace.We start small, with a question that sent James to Arie's work in the first place: why do companies cling to performance ratings, job titles, and job architecture when the evidence against them is overwhelming? Closure is the answer, and Arie explains why noise, fatigue, and time pressure make people more certain rather than less, and why premature closure has been the mother of great mistakes, from Pearl Harbor to organizational change. From there we move to significance: the oldest complaint in history, the road that took Arie from architecture to psychology, and why pay has become the emblem of how much we matter. We close on the hardest problem of all, how anything changes, and a personal question about holding confidence and uncertainty at the same time.What we coveredCognitive closure, and why difficult conditions produce false confidence rather than better thinkingSeizing and freezing, belief perseverance, and why information that was available still gets ignoredThe Italian postal workers, and why people resist the idea of change more than any specific changeCareers as closure: why we follow available jobs over real passions, and Arie's own turn away from architectureThe quest for significance, from terrorism research to the workplace where most people earn their worthPay as significance, the CEO pay ratio, and the insatiability that comes with a bigness-oriented cultureBigness and Smallness, the reciprocal model of significance, and love as merit times appreciationCompetitive individualism, Arachne and hubris, and whether significance requires winners and losersWeber, Calvinism, and the roots of the American work ethicPsychological safety, loss aversion, and why change must start smallReligion as an ancient antidote to hubris, and what fills the vacuum when it recedesPeople: Arie Kruglanski (University of Maryland, START). Referenced: Dan Raviv and Sophia Moskalenko, his co-authors; Harold Kelley; Antonio Pierro; B. F. Skinner; Alfie Kohn (No Contest); Leon Festinger (When Prophecy Fails); Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (positive psychology); Carol Dweck; Angela Duckworth; Antonio Damasio; Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (loss aversion); Amy Edmondson (psychological safety); Max Weber.Books: Uncertain: How to Turn Your Biggest Fear into Your Greatest Power; The Quest for Significance: Harnessing the Need that Makes the World Go Round, with Dan Raviv; and the new Feeling Big, Feeling Small: The Human Yearning for Significance and Wonder, with Sophia Moskalenko.Find Arie: through his books, and on The Quest for Significance podcast, which he hosts with Dan Raviv.

In this episode of Disengaged, I'm joined by Stephan Meier — behavioral economist, Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School, and author of The Employee Advantage — to explore why the next great shift in business is from customer-centricity to employee-centricity.Stephan's argument is that business has made this journey before. Companies moved from a product-centric to a customer-centric model, building tools along the way — segmentation, journey mapping, personalisation — to understand and delight customers. Those same tools can now be repurposed for employees, and the companies that do it will create an advantage rivals cannot easily copy. As Stephan puts it, hard is good: a culture where people are engaged, motivated, and innovative takes years to build — and that is exactly what makes it difficult to compete with.What we covered:The evolution from shareholder value to customer centricity to employee centricityThe zero-sum fallacy — Amazon's Harry Potter gamble and Costco's employee-first economicsWhere money works, where it stops moving the needle, and how a $5 favour destroys a friendshipPurpose — Kennedy's single mission for NASA and the janitor who wasn't mopping floorsThe engaged coach — clear direction with real empowermentEli Lilly applying customer journey mapping to female talent progressionH-E-B's cult following and the four-star truck driverHaier's RenDanHeYi model of autonomous micro-enterprisesBuurtzorg's self-managing nurse teamsJust right tasks — why the reward for good work is more good workAI-powered internal talent marketplaces at MasterCard, MetLife, and UnileverThe workforce of one — segmentation and personalisation through one-on-onesPeopleStephan Meier — author of The Employee AdvantageAlfie Kohn — author of Punished by RewardsDart Lindsley — host of Work for HumansJessie Zwaan — value beyond priceMegan Bernard-May — people experience designUri Gneezy — Stephan's co-author on incentivesTeresa Amabile and Steven Kramer — meaningful progressJos de Blok — founder of BuurtzorgJoseph Overton — the Overton windowDan Gutman and Stuart Gibbs — the just right booksBooksThe Employee Advantage — Stephan MeierPunished by Rewards — Alfie KohnMy Weird School series — Dan GutmanSpy School series — Stuart GibbsOrganisationsAmazon, Costco, Starbucks — customer centricity case studiesEli Lilly — employee journey mappingH-E-B — the employee-centric grocerHaier / GE Appliances — autonomous micro-enterprisesBuurtzorg — self-managing nurse teamsMasterCard, MetLife, Unilever — internal talent marketplacesNovartis / Sandoz — one-on-one personalisationFind Stephan at stephanmeier.com, where you can subscribe to his newsletter on the human-centric future of work — each edition comes with an original stop-motion Lego movie.

In this episode of Disengaged, I'm joined by Jessie Zwaan — VP of People Strategy and Operations at Leapsome and author of Built for People and Purpose and Work — to dig into the gap between the purpose companies advertise and the work people actually live.Jessie's argument cuts against a lot of HR orthodoxy. Most people don't come to work for the company mission, and pretending they do creates a dissonance employees feel but rarely voice — an Emperor's New Clothes problem she traces through the anti-work movement, which she reads as a funhouse mirror held up to HR. Drawing on Joe Pine's experience economy, she places work on a spectrum from service to experience to transformation, and argues most workplaces are experiential, and that this is fine. People are motivated by connection, autonomy, and creativity far more than by mission — so design work around what you can genuinely offer instead of selling a purpose no one believes.What we covered:Work as a product — the three symbiotic products every company runs, and why employee experience behaves like a subscriptionPine's experience economy applied to work, illustrated through a cup of coffee, and where most workplaces actually sitWrzesniewski's job, career, and calling orientations, and why performance doesn't differ across themThe purpose gap, and how to close it without overreachingThe anti-work movement as a funhouse mirror of HRLeveling guides and job architecture as systems of control — cognitive closure, familiarity bias, and why bare-bones winsWhether AI will fix decision-making and performance management, and why the answer is mostly noThe T-shaped employee, and applying deep expertise broadly in an AI eraThe perception of laziness across generations (Dickens wrote fifteen novels and never worked afternoons), and the shift from individual to collective measurementPeopleJessie Zwaan — author of Built for People and Purpose and WorkDart Lindsley — host of Work for HumansJoe Pine — the experience economyAmy Wrzesniewski — job, career, and callingPeter Fader — author of The Customer Base AuditStephan Meier — employee segmentationArie Kruglanski — need for cognitive closureRensis Likert — participative managementAndy Whitlock — The Human HalfHuw Slater — OliTeresa Amabile — the progress principleBarry Schwartz — critique of rational choiceBooksPurpose and Work — Jessie ZwaanBuilt for People — Jessie ZwaanWhat Pay Costs — James Alexander SeechurnThe Customer Base Audit — Peter FaderCome Up for Air — Nick SonnenbergOrganisationsLeapsome — where Jessie leads people strategyIntuit — finding purpose within a constrained missionThe Human Half — Andy Whitlock's consultancyOli — Huw Slater's companyModern People Leader — collaborators on Jessie's Substack, PL Build

In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Andrea LaRowe - Director of People Operations at 37signals, the company behind Basecamp and Hey - to find out how a high-trust, low-control company runs day to day.Andrea's core argument: stop tying pay to performance and you strip a layer of politics out of work. 37signals benchmarks salaries once a year to the 90th percentile of the San Francisco tech market, with no negotiation and no manager involvement, and rewards tenure through a profit share. Reviews still happen, on each person's anniversary, but they're a check-in rather than a lever for pay. What drives the work is intrinsic motivation - and a small, flat, bootstrapped company built to support it.What we covered:How pay works - benchmarking to Radford's 90th percentile, no merit cycle, no negotiation, and why managers stay out of itWhat reviews are for once pay is off the table, and why staggering them by anniversary beats an annual scrambleThe five-level structure - why level three (senior) is the baseline, why level five (principal) is reserved for people moving the industry forward, and how judgment separates people at the topProfit share based on tenure rather than individual output, and why it doubles as retentionHow a high-trust company handles a low performer - visibility, honest conversation, skill problem vs engagement problem, and why PIPs rarely earn their keepThe "manager of one" - hiring people who seek out problems without waiting to be toldThe 2021 decision to draw a line on political conversation at work, the roughly twenty people who left, and what it revealed about when leadership steps inWhy staying private and bootstrapped for 25 years let the founders decide what the company is for, and why equity isn't the draw people assumeSelf-determination theory - autonomy, competence, relatedness - and how 37signals delivers all threeWork as a product - treating work as something employees choose to buy, not something handed downSix-week cycles, kickoffs and heartbeats - the light mechanisms that stop a decentralized company splintering into silosAdvice for anyone stuck inside a pay-for-performance cyclePeople referencedAndrea LaRowe - Director of People Operations, 37signalsJason Fried - co-founder and CEO, 37signalsDavid Heinemeier Hansson - co-founder and CTO, 37signalsDart Lindsley - 11Fold, host of Work for Humans; "work as a product"Luke O'Mahoney - SapienX; "work as a product"Megan Bernard-May - Pollinate XD; "work as a product"Edward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theoryBooksRework - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier HanssonIt Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier HanssonFirst, Break All the Rules - Marcus Buckingham and Curt CoffmanWhat Pay Costs - James Alexander SeechurnOrganizations, podcasts and websites37signals - bootstrapped company behind Basecamp and HeyBasecamp - project management software; Basecamp 5 launched recentlyHey - email softwareRadford - compensation survey used for benchmarkingRework - 37signals' podcastThe 37signals employee handbook - on their websiteSemco - Ricardo Semler's company, upward-feedback modelHaier, Handelsbanken and Buurtzorg - decentralized organizations referenced

Episode descriptionIn this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Megan Bernard-May - founder of Pollinate XD, co-creator of the PX Dojo, and the person who led people experience at the BBC - to dig into what it means to treat the experience of work the way a UX designer treats a product.Meg's core argument: people experience is another flavor of experience design. Traditional HR builds around policy, compliance, and risk management. A people experience approach starts somewhere else - finding the overlap between what's good for people, what's good for the business, and what's good for customers, then designing solutions inside that overlap rather than treating them as trade-offs.What we covered:Why traditional HR keeps shipping best-practice solutions that don't solve the problem, and what a design-led discovery process looks like insteadMeg's path from architecture to UX to people experience, including the master's in organizational psychology she did to round out the workWhy corporate environments resist experimentation in HR even though product teams A/B test routinely, and what makes an experiment "successful"The BBC and what productivity meant there - why getting clear on that question first matters more than any solutionPay complaints as symptoms - what's usually underneath them when benchmarking already says you're paying the marketA case study from a credit analyst team where dissatisfaction with pay turned out to be a job-design problemWhy dual career tracks still funnel people into management to chase money, and what flatter pay structures unlockSelf-determination theory as a stress test for any HR change - does it add autonomy, competence, and connectedness, or remove them?Handelsbanken, Spotify guilds, and Haier as examples of decentralized models that lend themselves to a people experience approachWhere people experience should sit organizationally - outside HR, as a guild that runs across the businessThree things any HR practitioner can start doing tomorrow: ask better problem questions, stop asking for permission, document the workPeople referencedMegan Bernard-May - founder of Pollinate XD, co-creator of PX DojoAdam Axton - co-creator of PX Dojo, based in MelbourneDan Pink - "take pay off the table" framingLuke O'Mahoney - "table stakes" framing of centralized HREdward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theoryBooksPurpose and Work - Jessica ZwaanWhat Pay Costs - James A SeechurnDrive - Daniel PinkOrganizations and resourcesPollinate XD - Meg's consultancy, helping organizations move people experience out of HR and into the leadership functionPX Dojo - three-month cohort program for HR practitioners, structured white-belt to blue-beltHumani - online HR community in Australia where Meg moderates an experience design circle and runs a book clubHandelsbanken - Swedish bank, decentralized operating unitsSpotify - the guild model for cross-cutting disciplinesHaier - the marketplace model of the organization

In this episode of As Discussed..., I'm joined by Dart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of the Work for Humans podcast, and former head of business architecture for HR at Cisco Systems - to dig into the idea of work as a product.Dart's core argument: companies have spent a century misclassifying their workforce. Employees fit the definition of customers, people who choose every day whether to keep buying the product called "your job." That reframe rearranges almost everything downstream - recruitment, onboarding, what managers do, how work gets allocated, and what good performance even means.What we covered:The category error at the root of modern management, and why scientific management's framing of people as factors of production still shapes practice todayHow employees fit the definition of customers in a multi-sided business, and the route Dart took to that model through business architecture work at CiscoThe limits of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as a design framework, and what Dart found after asking thousands of people what job they hire their work to doNegative transformation - the ways work changes us into people we don't want to be - and why that belongs on the cost side of the ledgerWhat it looks like when teams co-design their own work, including the four-dimensional bubble chart Dart uses to reallocate tasks based on what each person finds rewardingManagers as brokers optimizing flow between two customers, the paying customer and the working customerCommon pushback on the model: does it scale, is it anti-capitalist, and why bother if the existing system seems to workPlus a short detour into the night Dart climbed the Golden Gate BridgePeople referencedDart Lindsley - founder of 11Fold, host of Work for HumansEdward Deci and Richard Ryan - self-determination theoryClayton Christensen and Bobby Moesta - Jobs to Be Done frameworkJoe Pine - experience and transformation economiesDaniel Pink - autonomy, mastery, purposeAlfie Kohn - critique of behaviorist management ("pop behaviorism")Antonio Damasio - on emotion and reason in decision-makingJeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton - the knowing-doing gapRicardo Semler - Semco's participative modelBart Houlahan - co-founder of B Lab, partner at Irrational CapitalSandra Loughlin - EPAM, on data architecture and AISemmelweis, Pasteur, Koch, Lister - the germ theory paradigm shift, used as analogy for how slowly new management ideas spreadBooksSelf-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness - Richard Ryan and Edward DeciThe Transformation Economy - Joe PineDescartes' Error - Antonio DamasioThe Knowing-Doing Gap - Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert SuttonDrive - Daniel PinkPunished by Rewards - Alfie KohnPodcasts and websitesWork for Humans - Dart's podcast, 190+ episodes11fold.com - 11Fold's site, including a curated Discord community and an AI search across the Work for Humans back cataloguePX Espresso - Luke O'Mahoney's podcast, where Dart appears as a guestIrrational Capital - the ETF Dart references that tracks how employees feel about work at the companies they invest inAeroPress - the world's best coffee makerConnect with Dart on LinkedIn

Alfie Kohn has spent decades dismantling the assumption that rewards work. His research across education, parenting, and the workplace remains some of the most rigorous and underread work on human motivation - required reading for anyone serious about how people actually behave. Punished by Rewards is the place to start, and it should sit on every compensation professional's shelf.In this conversation, Alfie joins me to examine why behaviorism still dominates corporate management, what B.F. Skinner got wrong, and why financial incentives so reliably erode the intrinsic motivation they're meant to amplify. We dig into the role of promotion as a control mechanism, what the pay gap signals about corporate culture, and how the sales function exports extrinsic logic into the rest of the organization. We close on the cycle that keeps reward systems entrenched and the difficulty of moving colleagues past it.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Alfie Kohn's work and books07:12 B.F. Skinner and behaviorism15:34 The role of promotion in corporate America22:07 The impact of the pay gap on corporate culture33:27 The vicious cycle of rewards and motivation

Robyn Shutak is a Partner at Infinite Equity and one of the sharpest minds in equity compensation. She joins me to talk about what happens when equity stops working the way it was designed to - and whether it was ever designed well in the first place.We get into underwater equity and the real cost of doing nothing about it. Vesting schedules built for a tenure reality that no longer exists. The gap between telling employees they are owners and what the cap table actually says. Why equity in VC-backed companies functions more like a lottery ticket than an ownership stake. And whether giving employees structured choice within their equity grants can close the gap between perceived value and actual value.We also explore a harder question: if equity compensation depends on stock price cooperation to feel real, what does that tell us about the instrument itself?TakeawaysUnderwater equity is not a passive problem - inaction sends its own signal and concentrates retention risk among the people you can least afford to loseVesting was designed to protect the cap table, not retain employees - and there is little evidence it doesMost employees in VC-backed companies hold less than 20% of shares collectively - calling that ownership is a stretchStructured choice within equity programs can increase perceived value without increasing spendEquity works best when companies treat it as trust, not controlChapters00:00 Understanding Underwater Equity42:23 Equity Compensation and Volatility51:21 Employee Ownership in VC-Backed Companies01:20:52 The Skeptical Side of Equity Ownership

ICYMI Kim Minnick, Kim Rohrer, and I lost a debate on pay for performance recently. We were debating against Mark Frein, Jessica Zwaan, and their team captain, Matt McFarlane. The whole thing was moderated by the amazing Jessie Schofer.So we regrouped to chat about what we might have done better, discuss some of the reactions, and we meandered into other areas too.We got into the history of how pay for performance became the default - how individualism got baked into compensation design, why corporate culture reinforces it, and what it would actually take to change it. We talked about legal personhood and how the way we define corporate success shapes everything downstream, including how we pay people. We got into bias, social media's role in calcifying bad management orthodoxy, and whether systemic change is even possible given the structures most of us are working inside.If you enjoy this and other episodes of As Discussed... please remember to subscribe, to like, and to share it with a friend that might enjoy listening - this helps tremendously.

Stefan Gaertner has been thinking about pay equity longer than most people have known it was a problem. He's a long-time friend, colleague, and one of the sharpest minds in the field - so when I get him on the show, we have a lot to talk about.In this episode, we get into the uneven global landscape of pay equity legislation and what that patchwork means for multinational employers trying to build coherent compensation programs. We talk pay transparency - what it's actually changing inside organizations versus what companies say it's changing. From there, we dig into the mechanics: point-factor job evaluation, salary band design, and why the methodology underneath your pay decisions matters more than most HR leaders want to admit.We also spend real time on flat organizational structures and what happens to pay equity when you strip out the career ladder - and whether that's a feature or a bug. Then we close on AI: what it can genuinely do to support pay equity analysis, where human judgment is still non-negotiable, and why handing compensation decisions to an algorithm is a different kind of equity problem.Chapters00:00 The State of Pay Equity08:06 Pay Transparency's Real Impact on Business23:06 Point-Based Job Evaluation Systems34:47 Salary Bands and Pay Fairness43:03 Flat Structures, Career Decisions, and Pay Equity1:10:33 AI's Role in Pay Equity

Luke O'Mahoney is the founder of SapienX, a platform of content, courses, and community for what he calls the "post-HR generation." His central argument is that People teams should operate like Product teams - designing, measuring, and iterating on the employee experience rather than administering it through siloed functions.We dig into the limitations of the Ulrich model - the framework that split HR into Business Partners, Centers of Excellence, and Shared Services decades ago and has dominated ever since. Luke makes the case that those silos have produced systems that serve the function rather than the people, and that product thinking offers a way out.We explore the Jobs to Be Done framework applied to HR, the difference between enabling performance and trying to drive it, and why reverse engineering problems matters more than jumping to solutions. I push back on some of the measurement assumptions embedded in product thinking and whether it risks falling into the same traps that broke performance management.Whether you're a People leader feeling like the current model isn't working, or a compensation professional wondering why your systems aren't producing the outcomes you expected, there's a lot to chew on here.Contact Luke O'Mahoney:LinkedIn: Luke O'MahoneyWebsite: sapienx.co.ukChapters00:00 Introduction and Post-HR Generation15:42 Adopting a Product Operating Model26:27 Shifting to a Product-Centric Approach33:49 Implementing Product-Centric Thinking45:06 Challenges of Traditional HR Models55:29 Cut the Cape Request01:03:05 Measuring Success01:18:24 Pushing Back and Asking Questions

This episode with Tom Hill goes into the changing landscape of Salesforce effectiveness, highlighting the shift from a transactional role to a more consultative role. It explores the impact of AI and stakeholder management on sales, as well as the shift to team-based decision-making in the sales process. The conversation delves into the challenges of aligning sales with organizational goals, the complexities of quota setting, and the impact of long sales cycles on sales crediting. It explores the need for collaboration, understanding the organization, and the evolution of sales effectiveness in response to changing market dynamics.TakeawaysSalesforce effectiveness is shifting from a transactional role to a more consultative roleThe changing nature of sales and Salesforce effectiveness is driven by AI, stakeholder management, and the shift to a team-based decision-making process Sales Quota SettingSales EffectivenessSales Cycle ComplexityChapters00:00 The Shift to Team-Based Decision-Making in Sales38:52 Aligning Sales with Organizational Goals45:11 Challenges of Quota Setting55:15 Long Sales Cycles and Crediting Challenges

The conversation delves into the complexities of sales compensation, debunking myths about seller motivation, and exploring the challenges of modern sales models. It emphasizes the importance of understanding customer segmentation, sales process, and product-market fit before designing sales incentives. The role of technology in trapping uncertainty and the significance of data-driven quota setting are also highlighted. The conversation covers the negotiation of sales targets, the role of leadership and authority in sales, dealing with big deals, sales plan design and philosophy, and financial modeling and governance. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the struggles of the sales team, treating salespeople as assets, and involving finance from the beginning of the process. The conversation covers the importance of governance in decision-making, the role of Compensation Cost of Sale (CCOS) in sales compensation, the impact of pay mix and plan complexity, and finally, the motivation behind the book 'What Pay Costs' focusing on pay for performance and innovation.TakeawaysUnderstanding the complexities of sales compensation is crucial for effective incentive design.The role of technology in modern sales and the challenges of quota setting require a balanced approach to navigate tensions and achieve sales targets. Understanding the struggles of the sales team is crucial for effective leadershipSalespeople should be treated as assets, not costsInvolving finance from the beginning of the sales plan design process is essential for successful financial modeling and governance Effective governance is essential for decision-makingCCOS plays a crucial role in sales compensationSimplicity, alignment, and motivation are key in incentive plansThe book 'What Pay Costs' explores the impact of pay for performance and the importance of innovationChapters00:00 Understanding Sales Compensation19:39 Sales Compensation in Modern Sales32:36 Navigating Tensions in Quota Setting38:13 Negotiating Sales Targets44:00 Sales Plan Design and Philosophy51:16 Financial Modeling and Governance01:01:11 The Importance of Governance01:09:34 Pay Mix and Plan Complexity01:20:34 The Book 'What Pay Costs'

In this episode, I wanted to share with you a sample from the upcoming audiobook recording of my book, What Pay Costs. I also wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself and share a bit about why I started this podcast, and what you can expect to hear.What Pay Costs and my guide to sales compensation, Nothing Left to Take Away, are both available on Amazon in physical and Kindle editions, as well as on Kindle Unlimited.

In this conversation I pepper Dan Walter with questions about the evolution of equity compensation, highlighting the early days of equity distribution and the impact of IPOs on equity compensation. We also explore the challenges in valuing equity, the impact of high valuations on equity compensation, and the use of equity as a wealth creation tool. We discuss the use of equity as a differentiating component of rewards in the tech industry, the concept of employee stock purchase plans, and the evolution of equity compensation in the tech industry. We delve into the challenges and misconceptions surrounding equity as a retention mechanism and the need for improved communication and education around equity. Finally we explore the historical context of equity, its intended purpose, and the evolving landscape of equity compensation in modern organizations.