Cyrus the Great - yes, I really like referencing him - had a
simple system of compensation. At the
end of a victorious battle, the plunder would be laid out before his commanders
and soldiers and each would be invited to take whatever they deemed appropriate
for their own compensation. He and his
closest trusted generals would take the rest.
In this practice he sought to teach a bunch of lessons fueled by complex
interactions between self-awareness, greed, fear and reward.
Think about it.
You're a soldier who has fought hard.
You are coming up to the plunder and in your head a bunch of things are
vying for attention. If you're smart,
your calculus goes something like this.
"I really want the gold chalice. However, I know that my companion really
loves the chalice so what I can do is: a) leave it and hope he gets it; b) pick
it up as my compensation and use it as a gift to cement our friendship; c) keep
it and hope that through my possession of it, he and I can build some common
connection; d) take the gold chain instead because it's got more gold…"
"Dude, pick something up," the guy three soldiers
behind shouts out.
What I love about the compensation scheme design for the
Cyrus campaigns was the fact that it was filled with subtle wisdom. Take, in full view of your colleagues, what
you deem to be appropriate and suitable.
Instantaneous accountability.
Instantaneous evidence of future commitment to the collective. Instantaneous perception on self and
collective awareness.
In the past week, I have been invited to consider how far we
are from the Cyrenian accountability.
For value that I delivered in three different transactions, I've seen:
- one
instance where others are violating their own fraternity fighting over the
spoils to which they were a party but in which they did not lead the campaign;
- one
instance where a soldier is deeply struggling with the articulation of the
value of his contribution in light of the entire needs of the community; and,
- one
instance where something I evidenced to have value has given rise to an
elaborate process of defining structure around a future battle yet to be
fought.
I've often said that corruption relies on three critical
elements for its maximum success. The
more remote, anonymous and unverifiable the operating conditions, the more
viable the ecosystem is for corruption.
Cyrus solved for all three. He
made his men take their compensation in front of their colleagues. Problem solved. By being in the same space, accountability
was immediate. Everyone around you knew
how you fought. If you did well, be
handsomely rewarded. If you cowered at
the back, demur from taking anything.
Seeing the scale of compensation both acknowledged the effort of the day
past but also set an expectation of the performance in the day ahead. Maybe you carried the day. Still being appropriate and judicious says
that you realize that tomorrow you may need to rely on the valor of
others. And evidencing the capacity to
take what is suitable while leaving options for others is a measure of self and
collective awareness.
As I engaged a call with a prospective business client this
week, these thoughts came rushing in on both the macro and micro scale. And it dawned on me that central to our
collective systemic challenges is our failure to clearly articulate missions. Cyrus' system worked because he and his men
all knew what their end goal was.
Imperial conquest which would leave many of them dead but let their
version of civilization flourish. I know
that my apathy for conversations about compensation up front comes from my
experience of knowing the mission that I'm on.
I'm also aware enough to know that the value of the endeavor is seldom
fully known prior to its launching - a knowledge shared by a precious few.
We don't know what to do with reserve rates and bailouts not
because we don't have the technical reflexes to spring into action. We don't know what to do because we don't
have a clearly defined mission on where we're going. I nearly laughed at the February 27, 2015 Financial
Times article about IMF's Christine Lagarde's interaction on the Greek
debt debacle. She insists that she
expects "clear commitments" from a country who has evidenced complete
contempt for both words (clear and commitment).
She and the Greek government all fail in taking a step back and asking
about the end-game of their efforts. As
a result, this scarcity-based, floundering effort is entirely incapable of
effectiveness because each soldier and each commander are trying to get what
they can rather than evidence alignment towards a mission that is a common
purpose.
The IMF's problem (along with the EU) is the failure to
contemplate a world in which economic hierarchy is less evident than it was 50
years ago. We're using multi-lateral
schemes designed by arrogant elitists who always had mantras of free natural
resources, cheap labor, and upper echelon consumption in their narrative. Now when many aspire to formerly exclusive
level consumption and few aspire to being producers, our capacity to confront
real structural issues is side-stepped in the dance of debt. What's Greece worth? Well, that depends on what world we're
building. What's the EU worth? That also depends on the world we're
building.
What We The People need is clearly articulated missions -
not a priori expectations on how the
plunder is to be divided. And I got to
realize this week, my complicity in assuming that we all kind of knew this all
along. We don't and I'm going to make a
much more concerted commitment to explicitly stating the mission before the
soldiers line up.
x
This is an important insight. I continue to develop my own clarity around writing mission statements for various projects, whether individual or shared, when they involve something particularly important to me. I’ve learned the hard way how difficult it can be to develop a succinct mission statement that even two or three people can agree on (as in, interpret the words in the same way). I’ve experienced amazing messes when people say they agree to something but their actual intentions as reflected in their subsequent actions are quite different—and they might not even realize it. Unexpressed assumptions or hidden agendas can easily occur.
ReplyDeleteCrafting a statement of intent that includes those elements that are essential to define or describe—without unnecessarily limiting or restricting “how” it will be achieved or the scope of the outcome(s)—can be a challenge. Something that seems perfectly expressed now may need revision later as perspectives change.
Your post inspired me to revisit the statement of intent my husband and I developed prior to our first visit to M-CAM, to ensure it continues to accurately reflect our intent.