Does bribing an employee to stop being obnoxious make sense?

In this week’s Keep the Joint Running (“Hard choices,” 11/10/2008), I raised the possibility of “bribing” a technically brilliant but socially obnoxious employee (PiN, for “Pain in Neck”) to behave better. The context was layoffs, the idea was the need for maximum productivity, and the bribe was a $1,000 per month bonus, after taxes, paid each month there are no complaints about the employee. Unsurprisingly, the proposal raised something of a stir. For example:

Dear Bob …

I enjoyed your column, but see two potential problems with your year-long deal with PiN.

First, you just rewarded PiN handsomely for all of his troublemaking. If I’m his peer, I’m starting to wonder how big of a raise I’ve foregone by not complaining more often.

Second, the difference between a complaint and a risk is in the eye of the beholder. If I’m PiN, I’ll have to think long and hard as to whether to report that the new “great deal of a” server selected by Procurement is likely to reduce my server room to a mass of molten metal, or quietly collect my $400 a week and feign surprise when it eventually happens.

How would you prevent these scenarios?

– Pondering the choices

Dear Pondering …

The first issue is easy. I’m not rewarding PiN for his troublemaking. I’m bribing him to stop it. Presumably, up until now his poor performance reviews have led to smaller than normal raises compared to his co-workers. They’re making more right now than their technical skills would warrant, only because they are easy to work with.

For the second issue, start by understanding that PiN is more often right than wrong. The problem is how he goes about being right. So if he sees that Procurement made a bone-headed move, buying sub-standard hardware to save a few bucks, the question is how he should raise the issue so as to avoid triggering complaints about him.

The answer, I’d think, would be to encourage him to let you know about it privately (in this role-play you’re his manager) so you can take the proper steps.

Your proper steps, by the way, probably don’t start by raising a ruckus. Your best first move is based on the “Albino Pygmy Elephant Theory,” and involves a quiet word with the head of Procurement. This individual needs to know that something in the organization’s procedures allowed a significant error to occur, namely that a purchase ignored the specifications on a technical purchase in order to save a few dollars. The result: The cost of the entire purchase was wasted, because the hardware is unusable.

The Albino Pygmy Elephant Theory? This is a principle of statistics that says if you run across an albino pygmy elephant, it’s more likely to be a member of a population than the only one in existence.

Which is to say the bad purchase was, in ITIL terms, an incident. By bringing it to your attention, PiN allows you to start fixing the underlying problem. Otherwise it will happen over and over again.

– Bob