In the good old days of just a couple years ago, all channels were commercial free. Music, news, sports and talk channels catered to a variety of tastes. The trends of late:

• Commercials have been introduced on some channels. The number of commercials seems to be increasing.
• DJs, many of them old MTV VJs from the 80s, are now on a few channels.
• The music seems to be growing more repetitious. When channel surfing it seems more prevalent that multiple channels are playing the same song at the same time.
• This is not a trend but is a recent change: listening to XM Radio Online used to be included with a subscription. Now it is an extra cost option.

I've sent an e-mail to provide this feedback (can't fix what you don't know is broken!) but I'm pessimistic about seeing any results. I imagine the trend will continue. Since the reason I subscribed to satellite radio was to get uninterrupted music (and get away from the inane and annoying "morning zoo crew" that seems to be on every FM station--take Bob and Tom, please!) I most likely will let my XM subscription lapse if the trend continues. Commercials and yakkety DJs are what I wanted to avoid. If XM continues adding these "features" then the value of subscribing to XM will be lost for me.

Individual pay for performance (P4P) plans, that is, plans that assess the performance of an individual, seem logical enough. Lay out what is expected. Set reachable but perhaps "stretch" goals to meet. Pay additional money for the goals achieved.

There have been 3 companies I've worked for that used individual P4P plans and they each shared these characteristics: 1) they were a rather large distraction, consuming time in staff meetings and such with little or no benefit; 2) the additional money was so little that it wasn't much of an incentive; indeed in some cases it was worse than no incentive at all; 3) the amount available to be paid out for incentives was based on the performance of the overall group or company--thus an individual could meet every goal yet get nothing.

Jeff Pfeffer testified to Congress about his views when the Federal Government was considering using a individual P4P approach. He listed 5 key points:

• Use evidence-based management rather than basing policies on casual benchmarking, ideology or belief.
• The prevalence of a management technique is not evidence that it works.
• The assumptions upon with individual P4P plans are based are flawed.
• Evidence of individual P4P indicates that they effectively motivate the wrong behavior.
• Performance is enhanced by high performance culture and systems. Focus on organizational cultures and leadership rather than tinker with pay.

The entire testimony is quite enlightening and a very good read. It is sprinkled with real examples and very logically makes a case against individual P4P plans.

The quote below sums up nicely my own experience with individual P4P systems:

I see nothing in the recent survey data to contradict the conclusion so aptly stated by the William Mercer company more than a decade ago: "most plans share two attributes: They absorb vast amounts of management time and resources, and they make everybody unhappy."
- Jeffrey Pfeffer

Consider this assumption in terms of your own company: "Individual performance can be reliably and unambiguously assessed." Does it ring true? Or is it a flawed assumption? Our work performance usually heavily relies on the work of others--we work as a team. Add to this that the judgement of our individual contributions, if they can be split out from the collective, is often subjective. Unambiguously attributing good or bad results to an individual is nearly impossible.

The best incentive plan I've personally experienced is a simple profit sharing plan. If the company makes money, it shares some portion of it with everybody regardless of their performance rating. Simple and unambiguous.

Individual P4P systems should go the way of the dodo.

Additional resources

Many Companies Fail to Achieve Success With Pay-for-Performance Programs

Why We Hate HR

U.S. Workers Say Performance Management Programs Are Not Improving Performance

On one of your past projects, when additional money, hardware, software, floor space, etc. was needed how was it presented by the project manager or whomever made the request? Did they indicate they needed additional resources? Chances are that they did not use the term resource. They probably asked for whatever they needed explicitly by name.

It seems quite odd to me that we freely use the term "resource" to refer to people but rarely use it to refer to real, honest to goodness, fits the definition resources. It's odd because people are not resources. Look at any definition in any dictionary and you'll see that none of them define people as resources. A person is resourceful but never a resource.

Some 9 years ago Loraine Lawson posted Management lingo must go because people are not resources about the foibles of management lingo run amok. She ably describes the issues and points how some terms, seemingly innocuous to some, can be annoying or offensive.

My favorite phrase decrying this practice comes from this 2002 post by Bruce Neufeld:

"I am not a resource. I am not a robot or a bag of nails or a cruise missile. ... I am a human being."

Relatedly, I cringe when a politician or some civic leader proudly proclaims "Our children are our dearest asset." Hmmm. I wonder what I can get on the open market for the 2 assets that are my children? Can I use them as collateral for a home loan?

I get the gist of their intended meaning--that our children our important to us and we need to protect, educate, provide for their future, etc. But the literal meaning of asset, like resource, dehumanizes them. They are not merely "an item of economic value" entered as a line item on a balance sheet. They are not chattel.

Referring to people as resources, assets, chattel, etc. is bad mojo. The terms person and people work quite nicely and convey precise meaning.