9 ms·
It is so silly that this might actually be a good idea? I do want a good reminder and todo/red-flags don't do it for me. I can seriously see why speaking to a h
by fermienrico 8y ago
It is so silly that this might actually be a good idea? I do want a good reminder and todo/red-flags don't do it for me. I can seriously see why speaking to a human and being accountable to someone can boost productivity. Consequences of not doing a task on time would be embarrassment and shame from someone you're paying. Or its just silly.
Customer defining the goals is akin to setting the difficulty on "easy" and beating the game. What would be good is if BaaS would interview the customer, set realistic but challenging goals for the customer based on the project needs and then push them. Similar to a gym coach.
- the8472 8y agoWell, if you want them to have teeth there could be a contract where you either pay them X amount on success or Y if you fail to achieve a pre-negotiated goal. With Y > X of course. To avoid setting bad incentives, i.e. that your boss still wants you to succeed, he personally should get a bonus out of the X even though the company earns less.
- jlawson 8y agoThe boss management company is then incentivized to hire incompetent bosses. Their entire business model is profitable in proportion to how often it fails. The perverse incentive has to land somewhere; not sure there's a way to neutralize this one. But it's an interesting idea.
- hndamien 8y agoMaybe if you transparently advertise the success rate it would neutralise since hiring incompetent bosses would result in less sign-ups. That said, not sure you could accurately verify that number.
- Jarwain 8y agoMaybe instead of paying the boss more if you fail, donate to charity or some other financial loss. A charity you don't like for a negative penalty if needed. If you fail, you pay the charity an amount Y. If you succeed, you could do nothing, or give the Boss a bonus of .5Y for being a good boss
- stevep98 8y agohttp://www.stickk.com/ http://www.stickk.com/ does this
- osrec 8y agoCould you explain why Y > X and not the other way round?
- the8472 8y agoX is their base fee. The difference is your precommitted punishment. Want to keep the money? Finish your project.
- osrec 8y agoInteresting, but doesn't this incentivise the boss to not do their job quite so well? Edit: read the second part of your original comment which clarified this. Perhaps the charity idea circumvents the wrong way risk altogether.
- jwally 8y agoWhat if the money was donated regardless. But if you fail it goes to an organization you don’t like. For instance say I don’t like Donald trump. If I fail my money goes to trumps reelection fund. But if it succeeds it goes to a charity that buys malaria nets for poor communities around the planet.
- derekbreden 8y agoFor me personally, I believe it would be most effective if I payed more (or only) when I completed tasks. At the end of the day, that's what's happening anyway. As in, why continue the service if it's not working. The incentives are already set so I am willing to pay (more) for successful management, and they will get paid (more) for successful management. You get what you pay for. Why pay for failure?
- yebyen 8y agoRead the Beeminder blog if you want to understand why pay more for failure... let me find one[1][2] (link below) You should want to avoid the payment! Is the short version. If you _only_ paid when you failed, you might go out of your way to not fail, if it meant you could avoid the payment. Especially as a conditioned response -- eg. planning to fail sometimes. You won't mind losing $5 once in a while, if most of the time you aren't failing as a result. It's no fun if you're paying the $5 every time. But it's no fun if you're failing at your goals every time, either. Failed once, failed twice, still paying $5? Why not up the commitment? How much will it take to get you to not fail next time, $20? $400? Or give up on that goal, once and for all. It's quite a weird system, but there is a lot of behavioral science behind it, and you will benefit by becoming better at predicting your capacity for important things, and planning. (Sure, you don't need Beeminder to do that, but it's a system for it...) There are a lot of ideas around the psychology of getting things done from Beeminder and friends. Like the legend of Murder Gandhi, you have to read this one for yourself: https://blog.beeminder.com/schelling/ https://blog.beeminder.com/schelling/ [1]: https://blog.beeminder.com/psych/ https://blog.beeminder.com/psych/ [2]: https://blog.beeminder.com/punishment/ https://blog.beeminder.com/punishment/
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThis is beeminder.com
- conner_bw 8y agoWas 100% certain this was me until I realized it wasn't about beer.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoPaying money if you fail is counterproductive for actually getting things done. You're now allowed to fail, it just costs money. There's a case study I remember of a daycare that tried to get parents to show up on time by fining those who picked their kid up late; late pick-ups actually increased afterwards.
- nsnick 8y agoThat was in Freakonomics. http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what-they-do/ http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what...
- em-bee 8y agobut that's a different problem. parents are already accountable to the daycare to pick up their kids, and the payment enabled them more flexibility and actually reduce the accountability. we are paying an after-school service for exactly that purpose. bossasaservice is about voluntary accountability where there previously was none. and it's fully in my control on how i use it. part of the point of being a freelancer (or entrepreneur) is that i get to decide what i am accountable for and what not.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> parents are already accountable to the daycare to pick up their kids In the absence of consequences, they are obligated but not accountable to the daycare. > and the payment enabled them more flexibility and actually reduce the accountability. No, it replaced ethical obligation (which, insofar as it is accountability, is accountability to self) to defined-consequence accountability to the daycare, which in practice negates ethical obligation in favor of transactional accountability. How that works out in price depends on the weight of the ethical rule involved for the individual vs the weight of the assigned consequence; it is counterproductive where you replace a strong ethical obligation with a weak consequence. People often overlook that other people have ethics; that's actually useful self-protection in many situations, but it backfires when you undermine common ethics in an effort to create incentives and manage to replace it with weaker incentives than the target audience had from ethics in the status quo ante.
- em-bee 8y agoi seem to remember a service where you'd pay in on a regular basis, and only if you achieved your goals you'd get a payout that you'd then be able to spend on holidays, or a party or whatever.
- mycall 8y ago> interview the customer, set realistic but challenging goals for the customer based on the project needs and then push them. Sounds like a normal project manager.
- ian0 8y agoI immediately thought of the most annoying (best?) project managers Ive worked with.
- jniedrauer 8y agoYou must have some exceptional project managers.
- busterarm 8y agoI know a domme in the Connecticut area who says that lately this kind of work has become most of her business. She takes money to nag men to "do their chores" and occasionally sends them a lewd or two. All via twitter.
- sandworm101 8y agoTo quote Microft: "recreational scolding".
- User23 8y agoSounds like some people need to take a look at the TRT thread.
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoFermienrico, are we alone in the universe?
- david-s 8y agored flags?
- dwd 8y agoThey call them business coaches and they plague business meetups and chambers of commerce. For the most part they are sales people who are good at telling others what to do, but you always feel possibly not that good or they would be running some business themselves. There are even business coach franchises.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoNewspapers hire editors even though they aren't the best writers.
- lazyasciiart 8y agoSee also all the professional sports coaches who aren’t good enough to play on the teams they coach. Knowing what to do, knowing how to explain it, and being able to do it are all different skills.
- dwd 8y agoThere's a difference in that you get too old to play, and many coaches did and at the highest level: Phil Jackson and Steve Kerr come to mind. A business coach should be capable of stepping into a business and running it. Just to be facetious: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach".
- hawaiianbrah 8y agoYou and your parent comment are both right. They certainly are different skills, and yes, some people possess both sets of skills.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoYou're just restating the same thing again. Why is a business coach different than other kinds of teachers? Going further, why should you learn anything from any kind of professional teacher? By your logic, doesn't the fact that they're teaching it imply that they can't do it?