LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

I am in the process of studying for the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt exam.  For those not familiar with Six Sigma, it is a framework and tool set to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and variability in business processes - which is also relevant to incentive compensation related processes.

One of the study book I am using had the question from yesterday’s poll.  When I read it, I was thinking exactly what Paul pointed out in his comment; it doesn’t seem like there’s a best answer here.  On one hand I want to reward everyone on the team for their work, but at the same time I want to reward individuals for their performance.

In the sales world, this situation is usually resolved with a ’split’, where everyone involved in a sale gets a certain percentage of the total commission…  and this is either a rule that is predetermined, or that can be decided on a per transaction basis by the employees involved or by the manager.  But when individual contribution is not as easily measurable, allocating commission to individual team members for their contribution can become really tricky!

As of today, 6 people voted ‘Give money to each member in proportion to their share of the work’ our of 8.  It’s still a small sample to make any statistical inference, but I have a feeling that most people might pick that first answer choice.  That’s the one I picked.

The official guide book answer was: “Reward everyone the same”.  Fair enough, when learning these frameworks, not all answers and author perspectives always make sense…  I’ll just have to remember which answer they are looking for, for the exam next week.