Poor Program Design – Let Me Count the Ways (from a real program)

I saw this announcement via my google alerts (names, amounts, dates, and in general a lot of things have been changed – but not the structure – to protect the uninformed.)

Someplace, USA — ACME Inc, a leader in (insert any industry you want), announced the grand prize winner of “ACME's Sales Leaders Sweepstakes!” salesperson incentive program during a special event (insert date and place).

Of the XX (number of) qualifying finalists, Mary Makesomemoney (made up name) from ACME Somewhere, USA was randomly selected as the grand prize winner and received a cash prize of $10,000 USD.

From January through June , the program rewarded sales staff for their efforts and recognized the important contribution they make to the industry.

“We are thrilled that we were again able to recognize the efforts of our sales team,” said Bobby Bigshot, president and CEO, ACME. “This incentive program is a great way to showcase our appreciation to the very talented and successful sales associates. We congratulate Mary and all the finalists for their great work.”

Each week for 20 consecutive weeks, qualifying managers submitted the name of their top salesperson in the district for that week. Each Monday, ACME through an independent sweepstakes administrator, held a random drawing where one lucky salesperson was selected to win a state-of-the-art 42” high-definition flat panel TV. At the end of the 20-week period, the qualifying winners, along with his or her sales manager, were invited to attend last night’s event as guests of ACME.  Building on the great results of the 2008 program this is the second year that ACME has recognized the contributions of its sales teams to celebrate the mutual success of the sales person and ACME.

Now – want to play "Spot the Bad Program Design Elements" with me? 

Here we go….

1. Grand Prize Winner of an Incentive Program – nope – Grand Prize winner of a "if you're lucky you can get something" program.  Yeah – work hard, be number one, but don't think that will get you anything.
    
2. Weekly random drawings from the group of top salespeople.  Okay – so if I'm the top sales person in District A and I sell twice what the top sales person in District B sold – they could "randomly" win something?  Yep.  Fun to work hard and have someone doing half the volume get the a 42" TV (which by the way – ya didn't need but still have to pay income tax on.)
    
3. Sales Managers get trip based on someone winning a random award weekly.  Yep.  So – the worst sales manager in the nation could get the trip if one of their people won a  random award one week out of 20?  Yep – great – you can have drinks with Micheal Scott at the bar.
    
4. As long as I'm tops in sales 1 week out of 20 and win a weekly random award – even if overall, I sell less than last period and potentially sell less than all the other 19 weekly winners, I could walk away with $10,000?  Yep – sweeeeeeeeeet!
    
5. Inverse of #4 – I could be the top sales person every week for 20 weeks in my district, AND be the top sales person in the entire company and I may not get the $10,000?  Yep – AND you have to have drinks with Micheal Scott at the bar during the ceramony as you watch the lower performing sales person get the award.  Fun huh?

I could go on. 

I'm sure there are some minor details missing from the release I copied and edited that may take away some of my arguments but really folks, this is just plain bad design.  Don't use random awards as your way of rewarding and recognizing non-random work.  Top performers are rarely lucky – they work hard and they do things that non-performers don't do.  A program structured like this – with random awards pretty much all down the line simply drive folks to work only hard enough to qualify for the randomness of the program.

I can see where people get a bad taste in their mouths when talking about incentive programs.  Me too.  Especially when they look like this.