Notes on paying people by result

A team gets responsibility for a launch result, but not all the levers. Fair pay starts with the part of it they can actually move.

When revenue drops in the off-season, should pay drop with it? Sometimes a slow month needs different work, not less of it.

A job description lists everything that matters. A pay formula does the opposite — it points at the few things that matter most.

I added a prize for the best performer. It was fair, the winner was fair — and after a few months it stopped motivating anyone else.

I gave my SMM manager clear targets: posts, stories, replies. It worked, until I realized I'd defined activity better than quality.

Hit the threshold, get a bonus. Then I saw what the formula was really teaching my team.

Not because it failed — because of how it felt to run it. A growth strategy has to fit the person running it every day.

Same role, same salary, different impact. That's where equal pay quietly becomes unfair.

An employee told me he was leaving — and it wasn't about money. A clear role can still become a ceiling.

Forced out of our retail space before peak season, I finally faced a question I'd avoided for years: how do you pay a team fairly when the work changes?

More KPIs don't make compensation fairer. A metric should affect pay only if it passes a few tests.

The original was 13 rows inside my management file. Today it's a product anyone can try.

After closing a business I ran for 15 years, one spreadsheet kept pulling me back. Here's how it became PayByResult.

Flat rate, rate + % of sales, fully variable, KPI-weighted. After 15 years running a business, only one model worked consistently.

Agencies measure everything — reach, delivery, quality. So why does the logic disappear when it's time to decide pay?

How a basic Excel spreadsheet for paying my team evolved over 15 years into a KPI-based pay formula — and became the prototype for PayByResult.