Malcolm Gladwell is one of the best non-fiction writers alive today. His books include The Tipping Point, (in which he explores the spread of innovations, ideas and trends) and Blink (about the power of the mind to make quick decisions, and to the extent the mind’s decisions are altered by biases). Each book would be more than worthy of a post here, however, I’ve decided to just discuss books as I finish them.

I came across this randomly just cruising around the internet for interesting material; it was one of my more serendipitous moments. Their exchange is dominated by discussion of sports, but I think Gladwell raises some interesting points concerning performance and motivation, and the effect of coaches and other players on performance. They discuss how performance spikes so dramatically in a contract year for a player (defined as the year before their current contract ends, and a new contract begins).

The contract year phenomenon is completely fascinating to me. Its clearly an issue of incentives, and the impact incentives have on performance. How can we incent strong performance? The keys from my perspective is having a great deal of variable pay dependent upon performance against metrics that are under the control of the person being measured. The larger the variation versus the base pay, the larger the incentive to maximize the metrics.

There are obviously arguments about whats important, but lets say you had a system that accounted for all of the things you’re trying to incent. It gives a clear path forward. My question is why only salesman are paid by an objective measure (though one that certainly has a great deal to do with luck)? I know there has to be some sort of balance, but it seems that we should be able to construct a system of metrics besides sales to incent an entire organization to perform.

Gladwell and Simmons exchange

Malcolm Gladwell’s Portal

Bill Simmons’ Portal at ESPN

Blink at Amazon

The Tipping Point at Amazon

Now I Can Die In Peace at Amazon

=========

Ok, so my regular readers may notice a few new trends within my blog. I’ve decided to add an upcoming posts section, mostly to motivate myself to write them, but also to get you excited about them. I can feel the excitement already. Cosmicwanderlust action, its fantastic!

I’ve also decided to add Google’s AdSense to the blog. My primary reason for doing so is to find out how effective it is at getting the right contextual info. It would be cool to see links that I’d want to be on my blog anyway. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to click on my own links, so I’ll have to figure out a way around that without altering my own statistics.