People or Process?

A while back I was asked how a retailer with commissioned salespeople could refine his ups system.  It seemed this guy's staff was struggling with the definition of an up, how they determined who got which up, etc.

I responded that the whole ups process drives me nuts since it seem to result in employees fighting over customers. Hence his email. I told him about the time I was running a Sharper Image and two salespeople got in a fight over a very small sale. One guy got so mad he dumped his soda on the other guy's head. What blew my mind was that the commission they were fighting over was less than the cost of the soda!

I recommend that he get all his salespeople together and have them write the rules themselves. I told him that I knew of one retailer who not only did that but then took it a step further and defined what the "penalty" was for not playing by the rules.

He thanked me for my input, told me that he would try what I suggested, and promised to get back to me. About a month later I got an email from him. It read, "Thanks for your previous advice. The person who was the root of the problems quit so the problem was solved all by itself!"

So the problem wasn't the up system, the problem was a person. This to me is a great reminder of why we can rarely solve people problems with a new process. I'm guessing that the owner just didn't want to confront the problem employee so he tried to address the entire process. Really, how hard is an ups process?  Sometimes we just have to confront a problem employee and tell them to quit causing problems. Doing this can save an incredible amount of time and frequently solve the problem.