Bruce Tulgan

If you're a manager one of the most important parts of your job is taking care of your people. You want to be generous. You want to be flexible with your people. Why wouldn't you? We all know there are managers who do more for their people. They bend over backwards, jump through hoops, dot their I's, cross their t's, they're always on the phone trying to get their hands on resources and they do more for their people. And if you're not one of those managers, what is your problem? People are working really hard to take care of themselves and their families. They are trying to earn a living. They're trying to take care of themselves and their families. You should be trying to help them earn what they need.

Now, you can't do everything for everybody. But why would you? What's fair about that? When did we get it into our heads that the way to be fair to employees is to treat everybody the same? What's fair is to let people earn, help people earn, and then reward them based on what they deserve. That's what's fair. And if you start doing more for some people and less for others, not only is that fair, but that's how you have real leverage.

What if you could buy results from employees, one person at a time, one day at a time, as if you were a purchasing agent and your employees were vendors? What if you could spell out goals, deadlines, guidelines, and parameters and attach a price? Like somebody comes into work first thing in the morning and you say, "Alright, here's what I need you to do today, let's agree on a price." You want to see productivity go through the roof? See, that would be real leverage. If you really pay for performance then you have real leverage as a manager. So you have to expand your repertoire of rewards, both financial and non-financial. Sometimes you have to bend over backwards and jump through hoops and stay on the phone, so you have more rewards to use as leverage to drive performance. And then use your discretion carefully. Do not make promises you cannot keep. And in my world, there's no such thing as a long term fixed reward. Long term fixed rewards can trap you. But short term, one time rewards (for example), "You don't want to work on Thursday? Let's take it one Thursday at a time. Here's what I need from you by Wednesday at midnight."

You want to help people earn what they need and that means every step of the way you should be in a position to say to employees, "Tell me what you want, tell me what you need, because there's a few things I need from you. Here's what you need to do for me to earn this thing you want." Make the Quid Pro Quo explicit.

BONUS MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICE
Help your best employees earn the most! Do you, as a manager, right now have employees whom you would like to help earn some special flexibility in one or more of these areas?
- ONE. More control over their own schedule.
- TWO. Control over who they work with; relationships at work.
- THREE. Task choice.
- FOUR. Learning opportunities.
- FIVE. Control over location and/or work space.
Name each employee you would like to help. Next to each name, make a note of the area or areas of flexibility in which you'd like to help this employee earn a special arrangement of flexibility. Think it through. How could it work?

Can you set up a situation in which the employee needs to earn this special arrangement every day or every week? Can you set up a specific quid pro quo of performance that the employee must deliver---every day or every week---in exchange for the continuation of the special arrangement?

Can you spell out expectations clearly for the employee every step of the way for exactly what he/she needs to do in order to continue earning the special arrangement?

How will you monitor, measure and document the required performance? You should consider keeping track of this as part of your ongoing documentation.