A social team gets told about a campaign launch after most of the decisions have already been made.
A week later, someone asks why the launch didn’t get enough attention.
I think this is where a lot of small teams get into trouble. The person gets the responsibility. But not always the levers.
I saw versions of this when I was running my own business.
Marketing could be responsible for content quality, reach, engagement, and how clearly the offer was communicated. That part made sense.
But the final result also depended on things marketing didn’t fully control:
Product quality.
Seasonality.
The available ad budget.
Timing.
Sales follow-up.
Sometimes even sudden changes in social media algorithms.
So when the result was weak, the conversation could get messy.
The owner looks at the business result and says: “This didn’t work well enough.”
The marketing person looks at their actual area of influence and says: “I worked with what I had.”
And sometimes both sides are right.
That is why I’m careful with performance-based pay.
Before connecting pay to a result, I think the first question should be simple:
What part of this result can this person actually influence?
For a marketing role, maybe it isn’t the whole launch result.
Maybe it’s content consistency, engagement quality, response speed, or the number of qualified requests created through the channel.
Those aren’t small details. They are the actual area of influence.
A good pay formula shouldn’t make someone responsible for the entire business outcome if they only control one part of it. It should make that part visible.
That’s where fair performance-based pay starts for me.
Not with the biggest business metric. With the part of the result the role can actually move.
Have you ever seen a team judged by a result they were never really allowed to shape?