Bringing back 10X
Last time, I talked about how the recession put an end to many 10X initiatives. How can we inspire that 10X mentality for improvement again? While I know this will be controversial, I think the large disparity between executive compensation and everyone else within organizations is having an impact. For frontline workers, they see that much of the value they generate is siphoned off to executives, so why bother to do more than progress at 10%? For executives, they’re very well compensated, and no one is getting fired for growing 10%, so why rock the boat with 10X initiatives? For too many people in too many organizations, there isn’t much incentive to strive for 10X—and there are lots of disincentives. So what can be done? I would suggest three things:
- Make executive pay more dependent on generating 10X innovation. If their organizations don’t generate 10X initiatives, put the executives on “special projects.”
- Channel more of the resulting compensation to the frontline people—and give a smaller percentage to the executives.
- Spend time creating a comprehensive and compelling purpose for the organization, so everyone benefits.