Line of Sight: Is it About Reward Design or Good Management?

Compensation professionals love to throw around the phrase "line of sight", particularly with respect to incentive pay design.  What do we mean when we use it in regard to rewards?

And are we using it correctly in understanding reward effectiveness?

Line of sight is an expression with origins in the military.  In this context, it means "distance to target".  In a reward design scenario, we use it to describe an employee's perceived ability to impact the performance measure(s) on which an award is based.

I think our use of this phrase in rewards often misframes the challenge.  Taken too literally, it may propel us on a search for incentive measures that are closer to the immediate confines of an employee's responsibility - when the real question should be centered on how we can help the employee understand the connection between what they do day-to-day and what the organization needs to succeed.

Ultimately, shortening an employee's line of sight is about helping them understand how their work can help move the company performance needle.  It's less about finding the right measure than it is about education and coaching. It's about communication.

While this has the obvious implications for making employee incentive plans work, it should take on importance above and beyond rewards.  It should be an essential part of what a good first-line manager does in the regular course of things.

Perhaps its time to move that phrase out of the realm of reward lingo and into the general talent management sphere.  What are your thoughts?

Creative Commons image "Line of Sight - Cobble Hill, Brooklyn" by Marco

Comments

[Cenek Robert Edward]

Need to emphasize both!!

[E.K. TORKORNOO]

Thanks, Ann! Great article and questions!

I think that the term 'line of sight' should be borrowed and applied as widely as possible in management in general. The field of Management borrows extensively from multiple fields and sub-functions: traditional and emerging (including loads of debt to the military). HR / People / Talent Management (and by extension the sub-function of Compensation and Rewards), has historically been big at such borrowing, and continues in that mode. For example, HR / People / Talent Management borrows and adapts extensively from the field of marketing in the employee satisfaction-engagement-experience-... continuum of constructs.

A central and pervasive challenge of management is how to align resources (human, money, machines, materials, methods, moments, etc.) to deliver on key measures and indicators of ‘Performance’ (however defined). 'Line of sight' mindset and design help to move past the tendency or temptation towards 'Garbage Can' or 'Irish Stew' or 'Mkportonkportor' approach to designing and delivering solutions. 'Line of sight' thinking helps 'keep eyes on the ball' so that individuals and teams can focus and execute to produce the target deliverables in optimal ways and time.

I think that Alignment, Direction, Speed, and Integrity / Quality are among the more important considerations, relative to the original ‘distance to target’ meaning from military settings. When dealing with people at work in particular, there are many possibilities of being massively ‘distracted’ or ‘derailed’ by other factors at play in the micro and macro environment. The employee or team could be a short distance from the target of performance. But that does not guarantee that they will ‘see’ and follow the optimal line to deliver. Human behavior is rather complex in organizations.

Just my quick thought for now. I may 'wake up' later.

Have a Happy Fourth Of July!

[Ann Bares]

E.K.,

Belated thanks for the comment. Excellent points. Human beings are indeed complicated, especially in a setting as rich and multi-variate as most organizations.