When dealing with equity, especially at private companies, expect the data to be terrible. Get more than one set of data so you can have a reasonable range for the terribleness. Then do your process in reverse. Instead of looking at the market data and determining how to fit people in, look at your people and determine what you are trying to accomplish. Then determine what levels of equity and types of features will help you reach your goal. Finally, take a look at the market data and determine if you are, based on your needs, within the right range of accuracy.

Sometimes we need to go back to our roots to be better compensation professionals. I have listed three lessons I learned while serving the public in retail establishments. I didn’t know that these would apply to a career in compensation when I started working about one-hundred years ago.

Actor Gene Wilder’s recent passing, along with a recent client call, reminded me Veruca Salt’s “I Want It Now!”. The song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the real one, not that lame version starring Johnny Depp.) As reminder, Veruca wants not only the goose’s golden egg, she also wants the goose itself. Mr. Wonka declines and chaos ensues. This seems to be an increasingly popular story in our tight job market.

Millions of people around the world have been captivated by the recent Jeopardy winning streak by James Holzhauer. Holzhauer was recently able to amass the second largest haul in the game show’s history. During his winning streak, he averaged $77,000 per game. For those not familiar with Jeopardy, the game is often won by someone with winnings in the single-digit thousands. Yes, he knew a lot about nearly everything, but that’s not why he won so much.

The benefits of a single glass on an average day seem inconsequential. The benefits on a long, hot day are indescribable. Recognition programs are like drinking water. When you drink enough water, you feel better. You think better. You perform better. You even live longer. Drinking water is such a simple thing and perhaps that’s why so many of us don’t give it the attention it deserves. We know the benefits. We believe in the benefits. We have even experienced the benefits. We still don’t drink enough water.

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!! Yep, today’s post is about cannibalism. Not “eating human flesh” cannibalism, more of the “eating young people's futures” cannibalism. There are now schools and investors willing to pay for college in exchange for a percentage of your future earnings.

“People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” We can trace versions of this saying back to Chaucer around 1385. I am pretty sure he never thought it would become famous enough to be used in a blog article by me! Glass houses have more problems than just simple stone throwing. Anyone who has stayed at a hotel with a room directly across from another hotel knows this.

Companies love equity compensation. We often use it without understanding its cost. We also use it without understanding its tangential impact. As it turns out, there has been a ton of research over the past 20 years, much of it invisible to most compensation professionals. The types of equity, terms and conditions of awards, and communications supporting these programs all have greater weight than most people realize.

Every executive wants its employees to think and act like owners. They believe with ownership comes focus, engagement, and passion. With these triggered, success is supposed to be far easier. But ownership is tricky. I break it down into three main categories.

Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs) get a bad rap although they should be lauded in wonderment. The proof is in the number of different areas that claim full, or no, responsibility for these underutilized instruments. ESPPs are much like the old Saturday Night Live “commercial” for Shimmer (“It’s a Dessert Topping AND a Floor Wax”). Unlike Shimmer, the mythical SNL product, ESPPs are actually delicious, effective and available on your compensation store shelves today. If your company does not have an ESPP, or has not optimized the current plan, you should consider reading on.

The CEO or head of Sales asks for something that you know CAN be done, but you are not sure YOU can do it. Sometimes we take a deep breath and drop in, trusting on our training and instinct. When we can’t do that, it’s time to ask for help.

IPO markets often work in much the same way. When markets are truly hot everyone is waiting for the perfect time to go public. After a while, it seems like everyone is going public at the same time. Values soar. This usually results in fantastic headlines, but many of these companies struggle to become “core” components that will survive the transformation of the market.

Could it be that we are designing and communicating incentives for our highest performance all wrong? A recent study titled “Reappraisal of incentives ameliorates choking under pressure and is correlated with changes in the neural representations of incentives” appears to show that the fear of losing a reward allows people to perform at the edge better than the desire for earning more award. This study specifically looked at the impact of incentives on motor and neurological performance in high-pressure situations. While this may not apply to an average broad-based plan, it seems to have possible application in the high-stakes game of executive compensation.