People can justify almost any action if they are incentivized to take that action.
At one big roofing company I know of, the sales managers were paid a percentage of sales. So, they got the salespeople to sell a lot, and did not care how they did it – even if they dropped the price or promised crazy warranties. While the salespeople and sales managers made out like bandits, the company was losing money on every sale.
At the same time, the production manager started his own subcontractors that he hired to do the work. He paid them peanuts while he billed the company a little over going rate. Of course, he didn’t care if they rushed through the jobs, didn’t do things well, or worked unsafely.
When there was a service call because of shoddy work, the production manager either ignored the customer, or billed the company for the service call!
Then there was the issue of materials. Since his own subs got paid by amount of shingles they were putting on, he always ordered 30% more shingles from the supplier than were necessary. The subcontractor (him) got paid to install what was ordered, and at the end of the job, guess where the extra materials went? To his house where he had a stockpile to rival any supply yard.
Obviously, leadership was asleep or afraid or stupid. Maybe some of each. A public company owned this company, so the leader had his own incentives and he was getting his share, and had no urgency to fix the problems, even if he could.
As you can guess, the company went out of business in spectacular fashion. But they sure were doing a lot of business right up until then.
In politics, the community, your family, your team or club, incentives drive behavior.
The good news is that you can design incentives to stimulate good behavior. The key is to watch out for unintended consequences, which can be significant. Think it through. What will people do? Will it get ugly in some way?
Don’t make it complicated, but create incentives to unlock the attention, thought, and best behavior of your team.
Incentives and accountability should always go hand in hand. I hate to say it, but people will people so like the old Russian proverb goes, “Trust but verify”
What a story! It’s hard to imagine a business operating like that but unfortunately too many do, but not for long. That’s a surefire recipe for crashing and burning. As a builder I have to be on the lookout for those types of subcontractors because if they go out then I’m saddled with their shoddy workmanship in my projects. People have a really hard time kicking out the lowest bid but truly the low bid should be excluded just on principle.