Manifesto

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Incentive Architecture

The system rationally produces inaction. Fix the architecture, not the people.

organisational fluencyincentiveschange managementfinancial services

Every individual making a rational career decision collectively produces an irrational institutional outcome. That is not a character failure. It is an incentive architecture failure. The prizes of genuine change are real but deferred and hard to attribute. The pitfalls are personal and immediate. Organisations that want fluency must redesign the reward systems, performance structures, and accountability frameworks that currently make inaction the safe choice.

Key claims

  1. 1Too many organisations make it too hard for their employees to be productive.
  2. 2Career risk asymmetry means failure is career-ending while success gets attributed to the institution.
  3. 3The no burning platform problem: profitable today equals weak mandate for change.
  4. 4Regulatory uncertainty gets weaponised as a blocker by those who benefit from inaction.
  5. 5Corporate memory kills ambition. We tried this in 2017.

Tensions

  • The executive driving genuine change in a profitable institution faces implementation sabotage from those whose world changes.
  • The prizes of change compound over years. The pitfalls are personal and immediate. No incentive system resolves this cleanly.
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