Modifying Team Behavior

One of the things I learned leading corporate teams is how to modify team member behavior.  There are numerous ways to modify behavior and in this post, I will focus on using Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.

In my role of leading professional services teams, we used KPIs to measure whether team members received a quarterly bonus and if so, how much bonus was distributed.  Initially, we had team member KPIs to match the professional services quarterly revenue target.  It was simple, the team members received a full bonus if the professional services revenue target was achieved.  If it fell short, then no bonus was distributed. 

The good news, professional services team members were focused on making the professional services revenue targets and would go to great lengths to keep themselves on track.  On the flipside, they were less than cooperative when it came to assisting team members from other departments like sales and product development.  The perception was if they assisted other departments, there would be less time to dedicate to professional services work. The impact would be no quarterly bonus because professional services revenue would fall short of projections.

At first glance, we were a bit confused.  The KPIs put in place to achieve the professional services revenue target was actually working against the company overall.  The professional services department may be doing well in the short run, but we had to step back and take a look at the impact to the company in the long run.  After some thought and dealing with some tense situations, we made some slight changes.

Instead of using the KPIs to just focus on professional services revenue targets, we used the KPIs to focus on both the professional services and company overall sales revenue targets.  The final result was that we applied a 60% / 40% split between the company sales targets and professional services revenue targets.  The professional services team members would receive 60% of their quarterly bonus if the company achieved its overall sales revenue target and 40% of their quarterly bonus if the department achieved its professional services revenue target.

This KPIs modification was felt almost instantly.  The professional services team was still focused on professional services revenue and they gladly assisted other departments as needed.  We also discovered that the professional services team would actually contact sales and other department teams to see if they needed assistance.  In the end, everyone focused more on the success of the company rather than on a single department and the result……..everyone won!