Performance Management Solutions

One can hardly fail to be aware of the current crisis in the world of finance and you don’t have to look hard to find the media (and the politicians) laying the blame squarely at the feet of the banks. It’s the fault of the banks, they scream; if the banks acted in a more responsible manner, etc – but, of course, banks are NOT to blame because banks are inanimate and have no capacity to act on their own. I even thought I’d seen such a respectable newspaper as The Economist make the same mistake – but they hadn’t (fortunately!!).
If we want to allocate blame (and who doesn’t) then we need to look at root causes and the fault lies with PEOPLE. Now, people are capable of … action and they are well capable of making the sort of problems that we have been suffering recently but the thing that really interests me is what causes “people” to act in such a “lunatic” manner. The answer, I’m afraid almost certainly lies in the fact that post-World War II society has allowed the development of an “entitlement” society in which so many believe that they are “entitled” to things. “I’m entitled to a job, a pension, a bonus, a mortgage, a passport, a good life, a good marriage” and so the claims go on. The reality is that we are not entitled to any of those things – we have to earn them.
So I have news for those now suffering from falling property prices and rising mortgage debt and are threatened with repossession: you were never entitled to a house or a mortgage and when you can’t pay you are not actually entitled to protection either, I’m sad to say. The entitlement society seems to have created a belief that we are entitled to an upwave – a bigger bonus, more pay, a better house, a better job – but when the downwave comes it seems to surprise people that there is a penalty for failure.
I would like to think that the next time a “struggling” banker produces a performance that earns him a 1 million dollar bonus he is made aware that if he fails to deliver the bonus winning performance then no bonus is paid and – horrors of horrors – when he produces a performance below the minimum required then he should repay the bonus and his salary and receive nothing until his performance returns to an acceptable level: now that would be real performance related pay.