Have you ever promoted a “star” performer who consistently hit the numbers—only to discover, a year later, that the culture had weakened and the strategy had drifted. Or, for that matter watched a sales team smash quarterly targets on legacy products while your supposedly strategic new offering struggled for oxygen? I spent a year maxing out the metric my organization said mattered. At review time, a completely different metric got rewarded. It took me a while to realize this wasn’t bad luck or a biased manager — it was a design flaw baked into how most organizations operate. Most of … Continue reading Rewarding A While Hoping for B: Why Smart Organizations Make Predictably Poor Decisions