Latest / Disengaged / A Post Mortem of "The Great HR Debate"
Transcript
- James A. Seechurn: Hello, welcome to the latest episode of the As Discussed podcast. Now, if you've been following me on LinkedIn, you might have seen a debate recently around pay for performance. Should we have pay for performance? Shouldn't we not have pay for performance? And as you might guess, I am on the anti pay for performance side. Now, on our team, we had the wonderful Kim Minick and Kim Rohr. Our captain was Kim Minick on this team. And we, course, lost this debate. We lost it 60-40, I think, in favor of pay for performance. So we decided to get together and have a sort of post-mortem of the debate and discuss where we might have been able to maybe debate a bit better or what the obstacles were to convincing people and how the debate went and what we learned from that as well. So we did that. And we ended up kind of diverging into a few other interesting areas as well. But we decided to just record our conversation and share that with you in case you found that interesting. So without further ado, I give you the post-mortem of the pay for performance debate. So Kim Minick, you are our team captain, and ultimately that means you bear full responsibility for our defeat for the last year. Exactly, so Kim Minnick: for the loss, yeah? Kim Rohrer: Hahaha James A. Seechurn: Yeah, where do you think exactly you weren't wrong with that? Kim Rohrer: ⁓ my gosh. Kim Minnick: You know, I heard that question and I was like, yeah, you're right. Kim Rohrer: You James A. Seechurn: haha Kim Rohrer: What a way to start. I'm sorry. Kim, why is this your fault? What did you do wrong? James A. Seechurn: you Kim Minnick: So, know, think, honestly, I think like the first arrow that Matt shot was they're going to talk to you about individual pay versus individual performance. like, you're damn right I am because that's what we're taking home every week. Like, that is the most tangible, the most recurring, the most impactful part of pay. And when you say pay for performance, ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Right? Kim Minnick: That's what everyone thinks about. So like, I- Kim Rohrer: They're not thinking about profit sharing. Kim Minnick: Right, they're not thinking about profit sharing. They're not thinking about a team bonus, which is probably adjusted based off of individual performance. Like they're thinking about what is my day-to-day take home? So I think that was like an argument we should have, should have better prepared for upfront. And, know, I think, okay, I'm a bit of a history nerd. Kim Rohrer: You Kim Minnick: And pay for performance, the first time humanity really got comfortable with it was when we started buying and selling humans. When we started purchasing enslaved people guessing what their potential was by evaluating their physique and what they may be able to accomplish and how much we would pay for them. And then we got comfortable with it in a more modern sense during war, when we were looking at soldiers evaluating their performance in the war and then changing their pay grade, giving them promotions based on ⁓ performance. And then in the 70s, know, World of Work came about and ⁓ it into the corporate world. And when that history is so gross, ⁓ Is there fixing it? So maybe we should have talked more about the grotesque history instead of the current state. Anyway, I'm sorry I failed you. James A. Seechurn: And one key, yeah, but the other grotesque part of that is obviously the cotton plantations where the modern sales model really kind of in horrible ways kind of came from quotas, really came from cotton picking. And so there's another grotesque aspect to individual pay for performance. It all comes down to extracting more from each person for less basically. Kim Minnick: Yeah, extracting more. And there's a of competition in it, right? Like a company's budget for compensation is only so big. So you have to, if we're doing pay for performance, there is an unwritten rule that you have to outperform your coworkers to get what's yours. ⁓ it's not what's yours, it's what's ours. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. I think that's the interesting thing to me about this that we I don't know if it's something that we should have like clarified at the outset before we all got on stage like when as we were doing our prep of like, what are we talking about here? And what is within the bounds of this debate? Because I do think there's this other question of like, like exactly what you're saying, Kim, that we make the assumption that this is the way work has to be. because you have to incentivize people so because everyone is incentivized by their selfish need to earn more to support themselves because we live in a capitalist world. And when you really, I mean, this, think our side is a lot more radical progressive we even got into in the debate that like, we are arguing for a world that doesn't really exist ⁓ and it's never going to exist if we keep saying, well, we have to do this because this is what people want. We have to pay for performance because that's how you motivate people. It's like, that's how you motivate people if you're going to perpetuate the white supremacy, patriarchal capitalist hellscape that has been going on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. yeah, that's the assumption you're making that you want to continue and just have this be a new evolution of the grotesque history, then yes, pay for performance is what you should be doing. But if, right, and it but I do think we probably could have spent some more time prepping for explaining what an alternative looks like. And maybe we can like play around with that a little bit now. Because I do think that is an important question. That's like, how do you change the system? We we if we can all agree that it's a broken system. James A. Seechurn: It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it? Kim Rohrer: Even if it's like, quote unquote, working now to get performance because you're motivating people with a carrot that they want and blah, blah, blah. Like, okay, so it's working. What does working mean? ⁓ don't agree with that, but like, okay, let's say the system is so entrenched that we can't even imagine how it could be different. Then it's never going to change. Right. James A. Seechurn: And Kim Minnick, mentioned at the beginning, is it kind of interesting you made that point, but was immediately Matt McFarland, very cleverly, I have to say, reframed the debate on his terms. The first thing he did was reframe the debate. And I just smiled at that. I actually spoke to a friend of mine after this. He said it was like just like in that gray area between disingenuous and clever, because... Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. Ha ha! James A. Seechurn: He knew that if it was just framed on an individual pay for performance basis, they'd be on the back foot. So he immediately tried to include things that everyone likes, like profit, share, and equity in the debate. So I agree. Maybe we should have more directly dispelled that attempt to break down the storm earlier. Yeah, right. Kim Minnick: they would lose. Kim Rohrer: Start out with a survey of the audience. When we say pay for performance, what do you think we're talking about? Kim Minnick: On the whole, mean, yeah, I agree, like clever, a little disingenuous, but on the whole, never worked at a company that does profit sharing and I've worked, ⁓ have quite the spotty job history. Like even when I get equity from ⁓ company, it is based on my role and my performance. Like it is ⁓ rooted still. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. Kim Minnick: And there are so few companies that genuinely remove performance from Total Comp. yeah, damn you Matt. James A. Seechurn: Well, I'd I'd counsel a few big company, a few corporate America, big companies like a lot of small companies don't bother with it. Like basically no tech startup does it because they can't and they only introduce it when they get big enough to feel that they ought to. And they bring on people with preconceived notions about what a company should adopt when it gets to a certain size. But also, just generally, permanently private companies and cooperative companies and different operating models around the world. They also don't do it. Like you're very flat. Kim Minnick: That's fair. James A. Seechurn: organizational types. I often cite like Semico in Brazil in the 80s as an example of a company that just did profit sharing. have Soma Whole Foods in England, you've got Mondragon in Spain. These are quite big, very multi-decade successful companies that don't do any of this stuff and never have done them. It's much flatter, much more egalitarian. So it's not like it doesn't work. It's just not that familiar with corporate America, I'd say. Kim Minnick: Yeah, and one of the... Kim Rohrer: Which is why it's sort of disingenuous to bring it into the debate because like, are we, what does the audience we're debating? Kim Minnick: One of the audience members did mention and government contracting. ⁓ my husband worked for a government contract for a while. And it was actually one of his largest complaints that, and it's the same thing our audience member said, ⁓ incentivized the lowest performers to stay because there was no pay for performance. But I'd argue like that's poor management. Like just because somebody ⁓ Kim Rohrer: It shouldn't be their choice. low performer shouldn't be able to choose to stay. Kim Minnick: Yeah, I think if we see a group of high performers performing well and compensated but equally, like, you want all of your co-workers to be held to that same standard? Because you know they're all getting paid the same as you? ⁓ James A. Seechurn: That's it. Yeah, and that happens as well. Like in small groups, that happens. Like if you generally give people the option, no one wants to compete with each other for the same dollars. Like no one would choose to be in competition with their teammates. But it's interesting how strongly the individualism through line runs through. And this debate often just comes down to, but it's not fair not to pay people based on their individual contribution. Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: That's what it all comes down to. But I work hard, therefore I deserve a bit more. Or they don't work as hard, therefore they don't deserve as much as me. It often comes down to that mentality, first of all is a coached mentality. And again, it doesn't exist everywhere in the world. But the question is, first of all, can you and then should you? And the you argument, think, is already settled. You can't, because all the data shows how little confidence people have in performance management in large complex organizations. Because work, by its nature, is not individual anymore for the most part, apart from sales roles and manufacturing roles and things like that. So you can't really do it. And that's where the data we tried to share was like, 2 % of CHROs have confidence, all that kind of thing. But then the question really is, should you, which is much more philosophical in nature. And there are lots of examples, even in corporate America, when that doesn't apply. And I think the best example for me is where companies actively choose not to do it, is like Google's 20 % time where you get all these wonderful innovations like Gmail and completely the opposite of pay for performance, just free time when people could do stuff. Now there were rewards at the tail end of that to ⁓ thank them for doing what they did, then they get a ⁓ role in that business unit they get create and things, so there are extrinsic rewards. But there's no carrot dangling, and there's no internal competition to do that. It's the person ⁓ that gets rewarded for it. So yeah, question is, can you and should you? And the can you bit is the big problem for me. Even if you do think it's a good thing to do. ⁓ It's really, really, it's basically impossible to differentiate the individual from a collaborative team-based environment. Kim Minnick: Yeah, I think so many people like take on, look, there is work that has to be done to keep the business running. And that is not the highest praised work. Like it's not the sexiest work. And the folks who like buck up and do it and do it well have the expectation of, I'll keep my head down and I'll get recognized. And really it's just the opportunity. It gives somebody else more of that. Kim Rohrer: Yeah. Kim Minnick: free time that we see work so well at Google and the other places that do it. So it's just, yeah, I think it's a, live in a collaborative environment. We are a team all searching towards one goal. Most of us are not athletic superstars, so we can't get stats that best pay differentials. I wonder what it would look like if we paid football teams all the same. Kim Rohrer: I mean, I think that's the interesting kind of analogy to me that somebody I think somebody either on the comments or on LinkedIn brought up of the analogy of like doing a group project. Like when you're we've all been in that position of being assigned a group project in school. And everybody gets the same grade no matter how much work they put into it. And there's always the person who's like pulling more weight than everyone else. And uh, you know, gets resentful of the people on their, in their group project that are going to get the A because you worked hard. Not that I know anyone who's ever been in that position before to be on a group team and doing the whole project by myself. Um, but I do think, like I said, I want to touch on that because I think it's an analogy that gets used a lot in this conversation. And the thing that is interesting to me about it is that is, you know, when I think about myself as a fourth grader being bitter that we all got an A even though I did all the work, I was a child, right? Like, was nine or 10 years old, learning how to be a person in the world. ⁓ was not pushing towards a more communal society. I was looking out for my grade and myself. ⁓ I that if I wanted that grade for myself, I had to work hard enough to get it and I was going to pull all those people up along with me because what other choice did I have? I wanted the reward of the grade. was, like I said, I was a literal child at that point. As an adult, I think that same kind of philosophy applies like, well, if I want this thing to succeed, I'm going to do my part to make it successful. And we're all going to get rewarded the same in a business environment. It's the company's job to ⁓ look the performance of that team. and say like, you know, we see that James did all the work on this project. And are the other people doing? That's a performance issue. And I think the idea Kim that you were saying about, you know, it's, it's our money. It's not my money. It's our money. It's not our, my success. It's our success. I think that's a really, really radical concept for individuals and for businesses because we don't live in a socialist And like, so I'm like, thing I'm concerned with or that I'm thinking about is like, how do we move the needle and get people thinking less about, did other people do the work to earn their ⁓ salary or their grade? And is that fair? more about like, am I doing my part to keep things going? And how can we make, how can we make it ⁓ more accessible for everyone to participate ⁓ in role they're in so that we all working towards the same? ⁓ Like a rowing team like they all have different on the rowboat but they all win the gold medal right James A. Seechurn: It's, you're working against a few quite, quite deep here as well. you know, if you do, there have been studies on activities and giving people the option of team-based or shared or elected rewards and this kind of thing. And ⁓ people North America will choose to have individual reward systems in place, but the results are higher with collective rewards. Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: So even though the team works better with collective rewards, people still prefer to have individual rewards. And much like you at school, the reason that you cared about your own grade is because you had an individual grade. even things like moderation that happened that mean that actually does help if people do worse than you, because the lower everyone else does, the more chance you have of getting a passing grade. So there actually is like a dog eat dog mentality in school that happens from a very early age, of disappointingly for me. But it's there from an early age. But it's all coached. which means it can be coached in other ways. So it's your point, how do you change this stuff? It doesn't change overnight. A capitalist society doesn't become a socialist society overnight, nor does it go in the opposite direction. But you can make moves in the right direction. to me, it's reducing the space for the more nefarious individualism components to operate. And narrowing bands is one way to do that. You just slightly de-emphasize it. Reducing the individual component in the bonus program is another way to do that. You just slightly de-emphasize it. Kim Rohrer: Right. Right. If only. James A. Seechurn: And if you pair that with the cultural shift towards we're in together, like, and if you pair with a cultural shift towards, well, someone says that I did more work than they were, and then your question is, well, why would you care? You know, we're going to succeed and fail together. If you start changing the rhetoric around those kinds of ⁓ discussions, means empowering managers, and combine it with ⁓ devaluing extrinsic. ⁓ And the other thing I really like to do with companies is say, well, try it somewhere. Do it in a small corner of your organization. Strip away all those kinds of things with a group that's tightly in it. And use that group to show the rest of the organization that there is a different way of doing things. Kim Rohrer: actually on a sales team at a company I was at because we hired a sales leader who wanted to create a less sharky sales environment. And we, ⁓ the way we did it like everyone still had their commissions and still had their, you know, their ⁓ kind of standard comp structure. we also introduced an element of their comp that was tied to team performance with sort of like additional incentives for, I don't remember the exact formulas, but there were incentives for. ⁓ ⁓ helping your teammates. like, it wasn't a random distribution of leads. It was like, you know, was like, ⁓ a new lead has come in. Who is it getting assigned to based on who's next up in line? But also like, if you get a lead and you know, it would be really good for someone else on the team. Like we will, like that shows up on your performance review, like under collaboration or whatever, like we rewarded collaboration as an element. Now, as I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, Is that still rewarding individual performance? Because we were saying, good job collaborating. You are getting a gold star. it, this fostering the sense on the team of like, we reward the team for helping each other and we recognize the value in sharing with each other that like, did make for a much better team environment and a much healthier sales org. And like, James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Ironically using extrinsic incentive to nudge people in a direction of team-based rewards, isn't it? It does work. Short-term extrinsic incentives do nudge people's behavior in a different direction. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: I know. I know. Well, you have to do something to change, like behavior change is hard. People don't like to change their behavior. So you might have to do something to get people to shift their brains unless you're like, we only hire socialists. James A. Seechurn: has got its own peril. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Yeah. Kim Minnick: I think I'm going to go back to the group project because opponents use that same example too. We've all been in a group and done the most work and been pissed at our group. I didn't finance class. I wasn't into doing ⁓ math projects. But is it not the company's responsibility to screen for things like mission alignment? are tapping into that intrinsic motivation. Like, it's not a group project. It's your career. It's dedicating part of your life, dare I say, like a large part of your life, to in community to accomplish a mission that you should be excited about. And if you're not excited about, again, ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Right. Right. Right. Kim Minnick: it's probably a performance management issue and why are we tying compensation to it? I really do think the individualistic mindset will ruin things. I, know, James, you mentioned the studies that prove it like. Kim Rohrer: Right. Cause if your performance isn't there, you shouldn't be in the job, right? Like we shouldn't pay you less. You shouldn't have the job. Sorry. Kim Minnick: It's that old adage, like if you want to go quick, if you want to go quick, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go together. Like we are humans. We're meant to collaborate. We're meant to be in these little bit more egalitarian societies. maybe I'm a socialist. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, the argument, I feel like the argument is not if someone's performing worse, you should pay them less. And if someone's performing better, you should pay them more. feel like if someone's performing worse, they shouldn't have that job. Like you should either be paid for doing a good job or you shouldn't be in the job. James A. Seechurn: And the other thing is, how do you know? So the big problem is, it's called individual attribution error, is this kind of broad error. We have a tendency to look at an individual and blame them for their success or failure and ignore the surrounding conditions. And this has been experimented on. It's a wonderful experiment where you get people to take part in a quiz. The questioner might be an expert in physics. The recipient of the questions might be a movie editor. But. Kim Rohrer: Right. Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: and they have to answer questions about physics. Now, obviously, they're not going to get many questions right. It doesn't mean they're not intelligent. It just means that the deck's been stacked out of their favor. despite that, the audience will consistently rate the respondent less intelligent than the questioner, even though they know that it's not their area of expertise. Because we have a tendency to assign an attribution to the individual, what's worse is this happens along demographic lines as well. So it's very exciting. Kim Rohrer: Right. ⁓ All Right. I was going to say you could do that experiment and say like one person was given all the answers to study beforehand and the other person wasn't, which one is smarter? Like, no, one person started with an advantage, right? James A. Seechurn: Right, and people will naturally choose. ⁓ even when we know, even when the audience has been told specifically that it's not a fair environment, they will still see the person not succeeding as responsible for their own failure. And it also happens along cultural lines as well. So this kind of experiments can run in the US versus other cultures. The US is the one that tends to assign the most individual blame or thanks to that. Right, so there is a deep rooted cultural mindset here. But again, the direction is not going in the direction of individual contribution, the direction of moving away from them, not just because people are more Kim Rohrer: So weird. I'm so shocked. James A. Seechurn: But even AI is coming into which making it even more difficult to figure out whether it's the person or it's the team or it's the person and the team and the AI in some varying combination, which makes it even harder to decide whether that person is responsible. So when you talk about the low performer, I agree, if you haven't got a good performer, you need to do something about that. And often that means getting rid of them or redistributing them. But the fact that they are a low performer is not necessarily to commentary on their character all the time. Sometimes it might be. A lot of the time they just might have come in at a bad time in the wrong place with the wrong set of skills because they were a terrible hire. And it's not really their fault for any of that, but they'll still get the blame. And the high performer will still look at that person and be angry that they getting the rewards that they believe they should get for themselves. But this is all manufactured and it can all be corrected. Kim Rohrer: Yep. The answer to we have a low performer and a high performer shouldn't be pay the high performer more they're doing better than the low performer who may not have what they need to be a high performer even right like you should manage their performance, not just reward. Like it's not a vac can happen in a vacuum. James A. Seechurn: We should be managing the performance. Kim Minnick: had a gal who, working at a company, she was tagged as a low performer she was adamant. She's like, I'm not a low performer. I had a terrible onboarding. It was a tough time in her life. Some things had happened. She's like, just, I didn't get the chance to understand what we do in the best way I could. before you put me on a pip, before you exit me, let me go through onboarding again. Treat me like a new hire. Let me get a restart. Kim Rohrer: Mm. Smart. Kim Minnick: damn sure that woman ended up being one of our top performers. Like she just needed a restart. yeah, shout out to her. Honestly, I think, and this was pretty early in my career. think that conversation really ⁓ how I think about underperformance, performance, support in the workplace. And then eventually I'm sure now has impacted how I think about compensation. Because had we played that out. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Kim Rohrer: Smart. Kim Minnick: she would have been low compensated or exited from the organization and the organization would have missed out on an incredibly impactful performer. Like it's such a poor bed we've made for ourselves. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Yeah, and we don't have to just keep changing the sheets to use that metaphor. Like we can, we could choose a different kind of bed. Like we could build a new bed guys. could sleep on the floor for a little bit if we need to like. Kim Minnick: Yeah, go get a new bed. James A. Seechurn: I love the underdog. I love the underdog stories as well. And they're really powerful lore in organizations when, because there's so many times that happens, it's not really the person's fault. It's just the right, wrong place, wrong time. like, if you give them a chance, they can turn it around. You get incredible loyalty and incredible success and a much stickier employee and a story that you can share with the company to show that while maybe you can turn people around, you don't just have to turn your back on them. and that there is the kind of company that looks out for people and tries to find the best in people. These are all just really, really positive stories. And it also, you know, Kim, you mentioned onboarding process. The amount of companies that get onboarding wrong is baffling to me because onboarding is a two way street. And when you bring someone new into a company, you bring fresh perspectives, fresh ideas. They're either from a different company with new ways of doing things. They might've taken a career break with a really fresh perspective. might be a student with new ideas that everyone else has forgotten about because they've been too long in the workplace. Either way, they bring something new. The question should be, what do you think? Like, have a look around, like get to know this place. So what have you got? What do you know? about the way we do things and how do think we could do things differently. Whereas so many companies, again, the factory model of work is like, we need to train you on how we do things here so you can get up to speed and running as quickly as possible. To me, that's just the most backward way of bringing someone into a company. It's got to be at the very least equal parts both directions for me. Kim Minnick: Yeah. I had a thought and I totally lost it. I was enamored. But ⁓ we think about, you know, I think we also, when we're paying for performance, we only looking at one part of the individual's life. We are only looking at their contributions to work and to the organization. But, you know, I often think you have two employees. Same role, same position, same tenure. One employee lives right next door to work, short commute, doesn't have any caregiving responsibilities, doesn't have any other financial obligations, can easily order DoorDash every day and spend all of those extra hours thinking about work, committing themselves to work. And they probably hit, I don't know, let's say 97 % of their goals. And there's the other employee who... ⁓ has a family, maybe they're in the sandwich generation, caring for parents and for children. They can't afford to live close to work, because let's say it's in a major metropolitan area, so they live an hour commute outside the city. They have financial obligations with caregiving, children, parents, whatever, and they hit 92 % of their goals. employee A would often be thought of as a higher performer and therefore rewarded more. But I would argue like this person is so good at managing such a complex life and still contributing at such a high level that that's actually the high performer. And we don't, we talk about bringing your whole self to work and being your most authentic self at work, but then we only reward for a small portion of it. And it just, it feels so frustratingly misaligned to me. James A. Seechurn: Mm. And the counter argument is always free market economics, big deal. Was one of the counter arguments, which is an incredibly unfair counter argument because it just means that a certain demographic, namely young white men, are always going to do better. And also people that are already on the ladder because if you, if you're in an office, it's only fairly wealthy people that can afford to live in the metropolitan areas then. allow you access to that office and maximize your working hours rather than commuting time. So it's just really just stacking the deck in favor of an already empowered demographic when you have that mark. Kim Rohrer: What? Are you- what? Are you saying that the system is rigged in favor of young white men? James, you're blowing my mind right now! James A. Seechurn: Ha Kim Minnick: And we also know... Like we know... James A. Seechurn: ⁓ I just found this out the other day. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: Yes. Kim Minnick: And we know that women have higher caregiving responsibilities. So even when you are in a committed relationship or a partnership with somebody, often, let's say just a man-woman relationship for ease, often the woman is the one taking care of more household duties, more caregiving duties, which gives, again, the man more time to dedicate to work. It's such a 1950s trope of Kim Rohrer: So weird. James A. Seechurn: Right. you Kim Minnick: you take care of this, I get to go make the bacon, and we're not, our society cannot operate, our economy cannot operate like that anymore. Kim Rohrer: Yep. You want to know, ⁓ you want to know something wild about that? Maybe this is not news to you, but it was news to me when I was working in office environments. you know, the reason that most offices are very cold, it's because the temperature settings were designed around the ideal worker who was a man who wore a suit. James A. Seechurn: ⁓ I have, I do believe heard that before. Kim Minnick: Yeah, men should wear skirts. Kim Rohrer: Like, yeah, like when you're designing around this, this ideal worker profile, you're designing around a young to middle-aged man who has a partner at home ⁓ care of everything else. So all they have to focus on is work. And seems insane to me that in the year of our Lord 2026, we are still arguing for workplaces that don't center young white men. But here we are, right? Like we're still, this is still a battle that we are fighting in from so many different angles. James A. Seechurn: So then the debate comes, I call this, I actually wrote a little section in a book I'm trying to figure out at the moment. It's called Gerry's Dilemma because Gerry always raises me, Gerry Murphy. I chat with him a lot and we play golf together. And one of his points is the argument you're always going to get is, but corporate America is so successful. All of these problems taken aside, it's so successful. Now the most valuable companies on the planet come from this world of corporate America. If it's so bad, then why are companies doing so well? Kim Rohrer: What is success, James? James A. Seechurn: And yeah, what is success? Yeah, it's a really interesting question because first of all, you got there as a social argument. Well, if these companies are so valuable, first of all, that value tends to end up in the hands of a very small group of people and not the people that create that value. Yeah. And then there's the social cost of that success as well. But interestingly, one of the really interesting stats I found is that, the GDP per capita of America is very, very high. The GDP per hour is actually in the Kim Rohrer: Yeah, success for whom? James A. Seechurn: is actually out of the top 10, I believe, because a lot of that extra output comes from just the extra 20 to 30 % more hours at Americans work compared with Northern European equivalents. So the GDP per hour falls behind Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, for example, among a few others, I believe. So it's not actually that, it's just that people work harder. Kim Rohrer: or not even harder, people work longer, people work more, right? And so like, are, how, how are we defining success? I mean, that's such an interesting question to me of like, well, if, you know, corporate America is so successful, then it's probably not wrong, right? Like, clearly success, but to your point, success is making 1 % of the population rich. Like what, how, why is that the definition of success? I mean, at, and at the expense. James A. Seechurn: Longer. exactly. Yeah, not with any greater efficiency either. Kim Minnick: longer. Kim Rohrer: of so many lives. Kim Minnick: what is success and is corporate success ⁓ good for humanity? Facebook, Meta, wildly successful company, billions of They've toppled ⁓ Like ⁓ there are ⁓ very serious mental health concerns coming out of media we're seeing. AI psychosis. Kim Rohrer: Right. Right. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Kim Rohrer: Harming children. Kim Minnick: Yeah, AI psychosis is a thing that we are learning more about rapidly. and oil companies, not super great for the planet. So like, look, I know there's a thousand other types of corporations, but just, if, it, is corporate success in contention with the success of humanity? I'd argue it might be. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: And it is, the PLC model, it very much is, because it's not just in contention with it, it is legally in contention with it, because corporate model, the PLC model, institutional shareholders are legally obliged to maximize the return of the investment they're looking after, which means they're legally obliged to do what's in favor of the share price over any other social argument. ⁓ So we've had social responsibility in ESR and these various other three-letter acronyms. Kim Rohrer: Great. Yeah. James A. Seechurn: But the reality is the share price always wins. So which is why you see a company laying off like Block the other day, laid off 20 % of its I think something like that. And the share price went up by about 20%. Something, I can't remember the exact numbers. Basically, you lay people off, your share price goes up because the institutional shareholders see that as a good thing. So you are directly competing with the best interests of humanity in the most obvious way. I do think as a new generation of people that ⁓ starting to appreciate the the possibility that maybe this model isn't the best for us anymore. It got us to a certain place, but it's actually relatively short. This unchecked capitalist model is actually a relatively short period of history that's been going on. It sort of tried and failed at the tail end of the 19th century in America with oil and coal and things like that. And then they got kind of shackled by the government. Now the government's not in a stronger position to do something about that and put in legislation, either party, frankly, in America. Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: and we're kind of seeing the impact. But I do think as a generation of people sort of looking at this and saying, okay, if we're getting any, doing any better out of this, then what is this really doing for us? Kim Rohrer: Do you guys remember the whole our people thing from Kim Minnick: ⁓ yeah, it was like a court case. Kim Rohrer: Yeah, I like this. feel like these were simpler times. just, don't know, this just popped in my head as we were talking about, you know, the success of corporations overall, in the context of like pay for performance and individual success over group success and is the of the corporation actually the type of success we should be measuring? ⁓ I just like a little flashback to like, remember when we were just like, our corporations people? Those were times, were different times. Yeah. Kim Minnick: No, it was a legal argument it. Kim Rohrer: I don't remember the exact circumstances of why we were, it was around something with like, what can they can be held accountable for, right? I can see your eyes. know you're looking it up right now for us. Thank you. James A. Seechurn: Supreme Court case, wasn't it? Kim Minnick: Yeah, and I am looking it up. The corporations won. They are considered legal persons. this spun off wild things. There was Because they're afforded similar protections as humans, as persons. So I wanna in one of the states touches a Great Lake, they fought for... ⁓ the lakes to have to be recognized as legal persons so they could like have protections and now and then the question becomes like well level of rights do you get do you get man protections or woman protections because ⁓ I feel like I have less protections than my husband Kim Rohrer: personhood. Huh. Protect them? James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Yeah. Kim Rohrer: Right? Are you three quarters of a person? James A. Seechurn: You know, you're talking about like social media, like Meta, for example, Facebook, very, very successful company. Again, they just recently laid off a bunch of their workforce, their share price is doing wonderfully. They, by the way, have adopted Pay for Performance as well, which is very interesting. In fact, two things, two things interest me about Meta recently. first is related to this conversation. They've moved to a Pay for Performance culture where the lowest performance getting zero bonus and the highest performance getting three X or whatever. And think... ⁓ Kim Minnick: It's insane. James A. Seechurn: The other set companies have done something similar. Google mentioned it as well, which is very disheartening for me, because Google has really long been the bastion of a big company that didn't have that kind of thinking and did sort of try and maintain its don't be evil, let's think creatively type philosophy for a while. I don't know how long that was really true. But Facebook have done it. And it's really interesting because it kind of does remind me quite a lot of General Electric under Jack Welch. So General Electric was one of the most innovative US companies in history for a long, long time. Kim Rohrer: for a while anyway. James A. Seechurn: Many of the innovations you have in your house right now, anyone listening, came from General Electric, like the mechanism, your refrigerator and dishwasher and things like that. General Electric did a lot of stuff and they went to World's Fairs and showcased the latest appliances which we now take for granted. But Jack Welch came and introduced an aggressive performance culture. And then in his tenure, over 10 years, basically shifted it from an innovator into a financial services company. And it ⁓ became a play, selling loaning out monies and financing equipment and things like that. ⁓ I feel like Big Tech is almost going through a similar transition. ⁓ not innovators anymore. The biggest innovation has been the LLM over last few years. And that didn't come from any of the Big Tech companies. They're struggling now to catch up, let alone catching up. It's two years, and Gemini still isn't as good as Chat GPT or Claude. ⁓ So it's that they seem to have taken this scale and volume approach. And with it has come in this pay for performance mentality. keeping the best and losing the worst. Kim Minnick: Let's just take a moment to remember that Facebook started in a college dorm room to rate how hot the women on campus were. Like these were, these are where our most successful corporations are coming from. And like, that's about as misogynistic as you can get. And here they are paying for performance, which continues to reward a certain type of human. I just, if folks aren't seeing the connections yet, I just don't know how to get them there. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Kim Rohrer: Right? Mike drops. James A. Seechurn: there is a further irony here. I don't know if anyone's yet seen the latest Louis Theroux or even knows who Louis Theroux is. Louis Theroux is a famous British documentarian. He's absolutely fantastic. come back out of semi-retirement, I think, and he's done one on the Manosphere, which is this toxic masculine, what are they called? The Tate Brothers, know, the ones that got arrested and that whole thing. ⁓ not the only ones. And there's this whole movement around ⁓ back to almost like a weird Kim Rohrer: No. ⁓ yes. Kim Minnick: Yeah, they're terrible. Kim Rohrer: You James A. Seechurn: parallel universe of the 1950s, where not only do men have all the power and women stay at home having kids and cleaning the kitchen, but the men could do whatever they want around that as well in this model. ⁓ documentary is really, really interesting because it goes back to really Facebook. So social media, social media is the thing that enabled the kids ⁓ then that now men now, ⁓ you know, these ⁓ ideas. And are now in that same social media force as allowing these guys to get to Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: again, young teenage boys and influence them around this way of thinking as well, all came from a dorm room college where a guy was trying to rate his female colleagues. ⁓ full circle nature of that and social media ⁓ is quite incredible. And governments, ⁓ government, know the Australian government started down this path of ⁓ it because is already doing anything good for humanity, but ⁓ more need to be done to stop the worst impacts of social media. Kim Minnick: Yeah, mean, they've really invested a lot of time, social media in general has invested a lot of time and energy in figuring out what like tickles your brain in the best way and keeps your eyeballs attached to it. it's, a, it's, well, that and like they've tapped into ⁓ ⁓ addictive personalities, like. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Kim Rohrer: They've studied manipulation. Kim Minnick: humans as a whole, we have addictive, we like sugar, we like things that make us feel good. Like there was a really interesting, I wanna say it was one of the Green brothers, Hank Green. I think he did a short ⁓ how social media and the doom scrolling that we all do is basically like a car tank ⁓ on fumes. And it gives you like just enough energy to keep going and keep scrolling. Kim Rohrer: Yeah. James A. Seechurn: microendorphins, right? Kim Minnick: but you never actually fill your tank. You're just kind of looking for that like next spot of joy. It was really interesting, but anyway, yeah, we've really gone off the rails from talking about pay for performance. Kim Rohrer: Right. Right. Right. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, that way. Kim Rohrer: I mean, well, I was going to say it's like, it's not, um, I'm cert, certainly not the first person to bring this up on a podcast, but it's very telling that the people creating these systems and tools and harmful platforms don't allow their children to use them. James A. Seechurn: that Netflix documentary, all the creators were like, yeah, my kids don't use this. They're not allowed to use this because they know how. Yeah. Right, yeah, because your kids are paying for my salary. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: because they know how harmful it is. But it's okay for your kids. Your kids can use it. Exactly. Kim Minnick: In fact, I'm gonna actually create content to engage your kids. Kim Rohrer: Exactly. It's, and I don't, I don't have an answer to that. I don't know what the answer to that is ⁓ what, what do we do? What do want people listening to try to do differently? James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Yeah. Kim Minnick: Well, before we, okay, I'm gonna steal the stage Before we do that, how would eliminating pay for performance society? ⁓ we know, if we have the data that say our GDP per hour is actually lower, so we can infer that people are working longer, chasing that reward, if we put everyone, if we paid everyone the same at a company, whatever that may be, would ⁓ work long? Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. Kim Minnick: would they be incentivized to put in those extra hours every week, hours every month? ⁓ I would argue they probably wouldn't because again, like they don't have that chasing of capitalism mindset. So then ⁓ those extra hours, ⁓ do they get to do? Can they go be more involved within their community? Can they be more present at home for children or caregiving or? cleaning activities. Like, if you only had to work nine to five, genuinely work nine to five, like what hobbies would you pick up? What volunteer activities would you find yourself in? What art would you create? Like, how could this change society if we actually pulled back from this sort of mindset? Okay, now we can talk about the options to fix it. Kim Rohrer: Well, because I think like in order to do that, there has to be some sort of collective agreement that it's happening, right? To like the behaviors of individualism. Because if you say like, okay, I'm going to start, I'm going to, I want to raise my per hour GDP contribution. Like I'm only going to work nine to five. Well, if my company has not made this a thing that we're all doing together, I'm going to get punished for not working as hard as my counterparts who are still chasing the carrot, right? like, ⁓ is not an individual solution to a systemic problem, right? Like this is not, we we, we the US ⁓ specifically, we to make systemic problems the responsibility. Like don't use a straw, everyone rinse out your recycling and recycle it like. that's not going to stop global warming. deciding they're not gonna care if they're getting paid more or less than their counterpart is not going to change our capitalist hellscape. like, advice really is like, has to be like, ⁓ who the leader, ⁓ industry and company leaders who are gonna actually change the environments within their organizations? James A. Seechurn: And to me, like the social arguments can only ever be solved politically. Like a company is never going to willingly give you more time in your life when it knows it could extract more out of you for the time it's got. I agree that's the way the world should be, especially in the world of AI, where our productivity is about to go through the roof. We should be using that. Well, exactly. I mean, yeah. But the thing is that this whole individual performance thing is a lie that has been sold for a long time now. And at some point, people are going to realize it was only ever a lie. It was just crabs in a bucket. Kim Rohrer: Sure. That just means we can work more, James. We'll have more time to do more work. James A. Seechurn: You're just being asked to compete with your colleagues, fighting over each other. Like, this is a friend Landon gave in that one, I love it. It's such a good metaphor for what we are. We're being told, ⁓ you can get all this pay, and you should know by now you can't. Like, you're gonna get maybe an extra 5 % in your bonus, maybe an extra 1 % in your merit cycle. The promotion's still only gonna happen when they believe they've extracted as much as possible from you from the current tier before they push up into the next one. This lie has been, they've... Kim Rohrer: crabs in a bucket. James A. Seechurn: The fact that 60 % of people still think this is the right way to do things, having endured this lie for so long after that, is just amazing to me. Because the people being penalized by that lie are the very people that want it because they've been told that individual differentiation is the thing that benefits them most. So they want to get out of the box. Yeah, but they think it's the only way. Yeah. Kim Rohrer: Because they want to get out of the bucket, even if they have to climb on the other crabs to do it. They want to get out of the bucket. It's the only way to get out of the bucket. But if they all pushed together on the same side, they could knock the bucket over. James A. Seechurn: Well, the trouble as a company is always going to find someone else is willing to come along and find another bucket of crabs, isn't it? So then there is a capitalist win here, which is innovation. So again, if you look at the way incentives work, they do drive volume, but they don't drive creativity. And over history, if you look with a long enough term, the companies that focused on volume didn't succeed. And the ones I used in the debate was Kodak, used Nokia, I used Blackberry. Kim Rohrer: And then you gotta go to get that bucket and tell that bucket of crabs what the secret is. Kim Minnick: Certainly. Kim Rohrer: You James A. Seechurn: Loads of companies you thought were brilliant and it basically unkillable got beaten by someone else in the market and they didn't lose to another company doing the same thing as them with more volume. They always lose to innovation because they failed to innovate beyond a certain point. So to me, yeah, because because no, they lose them all. So again, you know, you go back to General Electric, they just completely extinguish their investment in R &D because it looked like a cost in the context of EPS, quarterly EPS, looked like a cost. Kim Rohrer: because they're not creating the environment where innovation can thrive. James A. Seechurn: wasn't generating revenue. Of course, over the next 10 years, it would, because you don't know what you don't know when it comes to R &D. That's the whole point. But the companies that subscribe to this quarterly EPS institutional shareholder model end up doing this. They end up deviating, spending more money on share buybacks in R &D. In 10 years, the top pharmaceuticals companies spent more on share buybacks than they did on R &D. more in share buy-out. These are companies that supposed to be saving lives and they're spending more of the money that they could be using to spend lives. I think it's something like 750 billion over 10 years on share buybacks, whereas only about 600, 500, I think, on R &D. So the model, this capitalist model, is incentivizing short-term investor returns. However, if we really think about what we want from our pension funds, we don't want short-term returns, we want long-term returns. Or if we don't want companies to grow our EPS for six quarters and then tank because they didn't innovate and someone else came along and did it better. Kim Minnick: Awesome. James A. Seechurn: So there is a capitalist model here that if you can think long term enough favors thinking innovative companies because those are the ones that are more resilient to long term survival. I just think there's this short term tendency when it comes to investors and performance where we fail to learn the lessons from history and we don't balance that need to get we do need to grow what we have and that's why we have sales teams but we also need to invest in the unknown because that's going to be the thing that saves us. ⁓ that's me. My biggest argument is Irrelevance you've got to be as a company. You've got to fear irrelevance like nothing else Productivity shortfalls you can deal If you're a company that becomes irrelevant because you fail to innovate you will cease to exist No matter how powerful your pay for performance model is that that's the easiest argument, Kim Rohrer: have a, I, this might be a reach, so ⁓ feel to tell me I'm reaching. ⁓ But, you were saying that, you know what other department is often seen as a cost center and not as a revenue generator? Human resources ⁓ and innovation human resources, like what we're talking about with doing away with this traditional disgusting model. Like that is innovation. You're only going to get that kind of innovation. You're only going to have the space to innovate if you allow the space to innovate. And if HR teams are only focused on maximizing efficiency and not on creating something new, like the systems are never going to change. You're going to keep perpetuating and eventually, you know, whether that is attrition or James A. Seechurn: Thank Kim Rohrer: terrible company culture or like really unhealthy mental health environments for employees, which, you argue people care about or don't. But like, it absolutely exactly like, it starts if your HR teams can't be innovative, they're not going to be able to create the environments for your teams to be innovative. James A. Seechurn: certainly strong innovation though, like so you should care about it. ⁓ doesn't happen when everyone's miserable. ⁓ Have you come across the idea of PX people experience yet? Yeah, I find that kind of interesting. That's more of like an institutional solution to what we're talking about. I recorded a... Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. Kim Minnick: Yeah. Kim Rohrer: You want to know something really funny, James? That was the team that Matt led at Oyster. James A. Seechurn: Was it really the very person that disingenuously won the debate through ill-begotten? Kim Rohrer: just saying. I'm just saying I was I was running employee experience and he was running people operations and after we did a layoff we merged our two teams together and he was running people experience. I'm just saying. think this just shows like there's a lot more gray area than a dip that you know when we have to take sides in a debate. ⁓ a lot more gray area to this and a lot more room for collaboration on solutions. James A. Seechurn: people experiencing it. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so I just recorded a ⁓ podcast. It'll take a few weeks before it comes out. Maybe, maybe next week with Luke, Luke O'Mahoney who's, you know, talking a lot about this and I it was very, very interesting, very challenging. So the way existing HR functions, but institutionalized ways, different ways of thinking, like let's solve the problem. If you're, if your problem is long-term shareholder growth, well, let's diagnose that problem, define it clearly, and then figure out what we need to do with our people to get there. Not assume that pay for performance is the solution. Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: So that was kind of interesting to hear that perspective, I thought. Kim Rohrer: Reward high performers and lay off 20 % of your team and then your shareholders will be happy and you'll have temporary gains. Yay! James A. Seechurn: Yeah. That's a problem, isn't it? The shareholders have this mentality as well. There's institutional shareholders. We think of it as this kind of perfect market force. Really, it's just one or two people making decisions. It's a very small group of very powerful people making decisions about where they put their portfolios or your portfolios, really And they have preconceived notions about what is good or what is bad for a company, one of which is... lower the human cost, increase the capital cost, that is good because that will generate returns. But we don't know. We don't know what like if that's going to be the right long term solution. It's difficult to predict. Kim Minnick: It's also interesting to think like how long term do these companies care about, Like Kodak, you've discussed, really kind of fell off. But for an individual's lifetime, that was a very successful company. And like, it circles back to that individualism that we were talking about, like, CEO, I mine, see ya. And it's ⁓ how... Kim Rohrer: Yay! Kim Minnick: How deeply do you care about the legacy of what you're building and that impacts humanity, society, the environment, take your pick? I'd argue that when Mark Zuckerberg was sitting in his dorm room trying to figure out who was the hottest chick on campus, it bother him to have a legacy ⁓ of d***. destroying mental wellness, toppling governments. know, he's out building his bunker in Hawaii now. So think about like long-term success whose timeline. James A. Seechurn: Right. I think the last thing I get your thoughts on as well is familiarity bias is a huge force ⁓ this kind of discussion. ⁓ two things. First of all, I really enjoyed the debate and in particular, the sort of more casual closing discussion that we had at the end of it, where all six of us basically agree. Whatever words you use, we agree that something's broken, agree that something's not working effectively. ⁓ Kim Minnick: Hmm, I don't know. James A. Seechurn: We agree that moving away pay performances is difficult pill to swallow. But the thing is like, it's not like you've got nothing and you're trying to debate what the right way is to do something. It's that you've got something very deeply ingrained into people's familiarity and they've been brought up from very early age from school, like to come to your point about school. From early days in the school, you're to compete with your colleagues. And there's this idea like in the West that there is this, there should be this kind of competition Kim Rohrer: Mm-hmm. Okay. James A. Seechurn: you're asking people to give up that, that they've spent many decades cultivating and have emotionally attached themselves to. So to give up that means admitting in some capacity that you've been wrong for a very long time, which is a very, very difficult change in mindset for a lot of people to get by. So ⁓ a ⁓ is very rarely the way that things are going to change. But I think when you do look around at the companies that succeed and the companies they innovate, you do see that it is basically theory, which has been around from the seventies telling us how to get the most out of people. Kim Minnick: Yeah. to the person that you modeled out, like my whole life I've grown up believing this, I have this familiarity bias, this is how I win. To be we're not offering something that's like wildly exciting to make that change, right? Like we're saying, look, this is a ⁓ longer sustainable This might not reward as quickly. ⁓ But eventually you will get so much more out of it, not just in your profession, not just in your output, not just in your work, but in your life. the addiction to work takes a long time to Like when I stepped out from in-house work and I'll say like even today, like if I'm not full calendar, 50, 60 hours a week, I'm like, ⁓ my God, I'm failing. You know, but it's just, it's so, it's not true. It's just so, to your point, James, deeply ingrained within us. And it does take, it would take such a massive movement and such a tangible reward that I don't know if see it in our lifetimes, but maybe, I don't know, maybe a revolution will happen. Kim Rohrer: Yeah. James A. Seechurn: I think you see it all the time. That's the nice thing. And again, when you look at the younger generation, they're much more the people I work with, and I've been a few years kind of independent now, so I'm not as in touch with it. But I feel like when I work with younger generation, they're much more reminiscent of ⁓ the younger generation in Europe than they were the older generation in America, in the sense that they wanted to get the most out of life, but the same as working. And they wanted to travel. And they wanted to see things. And they weren't quite as tied into that corporate. rat race, the crab bucket mentality you might believe. ⁓ Kim Rohrer: I think that's title of app, the crab bucket. James A. Seechurn: Okay, yeah, I've got to credit Landon Peterson for that one though, yeah, they're not quite as crabby, know, in their mentality. so do think there are signs and change happens all the time, whether you just tend not to notice it because it's, glacial. The metaphor would use is like, well, the top of Everest is once the floor of an ocean, just don't notice it rising. And so change is always happening. It's just that you don't notice it every day, therefore it doesn't happen very often. But you know, 10 years ago, we didn't have all this pay transparency legislation. You didn't have fishbowl and blind and places where people go and openly discuss their employees. and have glass door ratings for every company where companies couldn't hide away their toxic cultures and then they're up there for the world to see. So things have changed a lot in quite a short space of time and you're about to have a whole new generation of people in leadership roles. Kim Rohrer: About like 10, 15 years from now, people are going to be referencing this podcast when they talk about the beginning of the revolution. They're going to be like, well, I'm referencing the Rohr, Stechern, Minnick discussion from March 13th, 2026, where they discussed crabs in a bucket. There was a great, the great HR debate. The great HR debate. We're going to, someone's going to reference our podcasts in a book. James A. Seechurn: I think so. Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Kim Minnick: There was this great debate I heard very early in my career. James A. Seechurn: you Kim Minnick: It planted a seed. We're just out here planting seeds. Kim Rohrer: someday and we will be long gone from this earth but our children's children's children will be like that's my ancestor. don't know it's it's it's good to think though like in all reality that like even if we don't see this change in our lifetimes that we are doing what we can to push the conversation forward every day and that's how I like I used to look at this when I was in house at startups like ⁓ I'm going to change the entire industry of HR myself. James A. Seechurn: Ha ha ha ha! that expression? ⁓ Kim Rohrer: but I can change how this company, I know, right? I wish. like, I can change how this company does HR. ⁓ can change how these employees experience HR. And I can then like let those impacts ripple out and out and out. And like the best thing that ever happened in those early days was one of our employees left for a large, uh, well-known brand company and messaged me to say like, you really changed how I think about employee experience and culture and onboarding. And like, I have a lot of notes for this company based on what I learned working with you. And this is not an HR person, this is an engineer. And they were like, I was like, okay, like I helped one person see James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Kim Rohrer: how work could be different. And that has now taken them to another company where they're gonna try to push for change in that company. And then maybe that'll influence someone else. And over time, we see the change. There's a great song from the musical, Suffs, the poorly named, but great musical Suffs about this. It's like, our job is to just like keep moving forward and keep moving the conversation forward, if we may not live see the results. James A. Seechurn: I think that's a wonderful sentiment to. Kim Minnick: But how does one, oh, I was gonna say, how does one become a maverick? Like you hear these people, yeah, no, we should end it. You're right, you're right. We'll save that question for another time. James A. Seechurn: I was going say that's a wonderful sentiment to end on. Kim Rohrer: I think we are. No, I think we are the we are the ma we are the Mavericks is what I is what I'm saying is like this is what it means to be a Maverick. This is what it means to be revolutionary. It doesn't mean the the big fight at the end of the multi novel series. It means starting with the first book in the series and like we might be in book two or book three, we might not be in book 13 yet. But like we are doing our part to keep the story moving forward. And that is all we can do. James A. Seechurn: We talk, we mentioned being a maverick. Interesting little story here. We can edit this out if we don't like it. But Samuel maverick is where that expression comes from. was a cattle rancher in Texas. And he was, and he, his thing of doing things differently was not to brand his cattle. So he didn't do it. said, I didn't want to do it. That's where it comes from. but people still brand their cattle. So the maverick didn't get their way. ⁓ Kim Minnick: That's where that comes from. Kim Rohrer: I had no idea. But I bet the Maverick changed some people, right? James A. Seechurn: Yeah, he changed a few people, but he's got his reputation as a maverick, but he didn't inspire long-term change, he? So the maverick isn't always what you need. So sometimes you just need the quiet people in the background like you can, just planting a seed, like spreading an idea. That's the real change, it's the boring change, but it's the change that actually makes a difference. Boring change, I mean, it might as well be at this point. I'm going have to do something about that. Kim Rohrer: Boring change. Kim Minnick: What's the title of your next book, James? Kim Rohrer: my book, it's boring. Kim Minnick: Well this was cathartic. Kim Rohrer: ⁓ Yes, thank you for suggesting that we have this little wrap session. James A. Seechurn: Well, you know, I was thinking of just saying, let's just have a chat. And then I thought, well, we might as record it and see what happens. And I think it's probably probably LinkedIn worthy, isn't it? We might as put it out and see what people say. Kim Rohrer: Yeah, you know what? I'll say it again. If one person listens to this and does something differently, they will have been worth it. Kim Minnick: It had been worth it. Yeah. All right. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Well, guess until the next debate as well. What are we doing for the next one? It must be something. Kim Minnick: You know, I'm, I'm gonna chat with our opposing team, but man, I wanna talk about, I wanna talk about pips. I love a pip, and I know that's a spicy sentence. I know that's a spicy sentence. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Kim Rohrer: ⁓ I would love to talk about pips. I love pips. no, Kim, I will join on your pro pip team in a... Done. Yes. Hell yeah. James A. Seechurn: ⁓ that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Kim Minnick: I want to debate scheduled send. think scheduled send is an affront to flexible work environments. I'm sure I have some other spicy topics that. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: Ha ha. I wanted to do salary bands just fundamentally, salary bands even worth it. Do they do anything? we have them like a company? There are a few companies that don't. Is it worth doing in era of pay transparency? I wrote a post on LinkedIn and a of people's back up by suggesting that maybe we don't need salary bans anymore. And a lot of people said, actually, yeah, I'm not sure what they're ⁓ solving. But it kind of plays exactly the same debate as the pay for performance one as well. Kim Rohrer: Ooh. Kim Minnick: I mean, really, like, feel like anything we debate on, we're just going up against familiarity bias, and I'm ready for a lifetime of losing. James A. Seechurn: But it's fine, it's fine. I've dealt with a lifetime of losing, it's fine. Kim Rohrer: But you know what? Like, again, like, is it losing? Is it losing if you change one heart and one mind? Like, I had- Kim Minnick: I mean, my cattle's won't be branded, that's for sure. Kim Rohrer: had ⁓ claim happiness with our loss here is I have had three people messaged me unsolicited to say your team changed my mind. And I like, you know what, I will take that. James A. Seechurn: ⁓ Yeah, there you go. So you 3x'd your target of one person. I that's gotta be worth something. Exactly, yeah. Kim Minnick: Shout out, shout out. Kim Rohrer: ⁓ You should pay me more for that 300 % increase they'll be so thrilled you guys are both laid off though. Sorry Kim Minnick: 300 % increase. Your shareholders will be thrilled. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, ⁓ All Well, let's call it a day and let's get it, let's get our weekend started. But yeah, that was fun, as was debate. Kim Minnick: Ugh. Kim Rohrer: God, ⁓ man, thank you. Yes. Alright. Talk to y'all later. Bye. Kim Minnick: Yeah, good times. Thanks. James A. Seechurn: All right. Take care, both. See you. Bye.