When We Win, We All Win
Dan Marino. Charles Barkley. Connor McDavid. Ted Williams.
Four extraordinary athletes. Four very different careers. Four different sports.
What do they have in common?
Their professional careers are unquestionably stellar, filled with extraordinary individual accomplishments. But between these four, the number of championships: 0
Marino retired as one of football’s most prolific passers. Barkley was an NBA MVP. Williams remains one of baseball’s greatest hitters. McDavid is one of the greatest hockey players of his generation. Yet none has won their sport’s ultimate prize.
Now consider another group.
· 2004 Detroit Pistons
· 2015 Kansas City Royals
· 2015–16 Leicester City
Different sports. Different eras. Different circumstances.
But teams remembered for something perhaps more important than any individual statistic: They won.
The 2004 Pistons famously defeated a Los Angeles Lakers roster containing four future Hall of Famers. Detroit certainly had exceptional players of its own, but its identity was built around defense, roles, and collective execution.
Leicester City entered the 2015–16 Premier League season as an improbable contender and finished first. Jamie Vardy scored 24 goals. Riyad Mahrez was brilliant. N’Golo Kanté seemed to be everywhere.
They had stars. But the stars were part of a team.
Sports loves individual statistics.
Goals. Assists. Home runs. RBIs. Passing yards. Touchdowns. Points. Rebounds.
We measure almost everything an athlete does. We celebrate individual greatness. We give out MVP trophies. We build Hall of Fame careers around individual accomplishments.
But no matter how many personal accomplishments they accumulate, athletes who never win their sport’s highest honor are often remembered, at least in part, for what is missing.
Perhaps no athlete illustrates this better than Connor McDavid. The first overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft has become one of the greatest players of his generation, accumulating scoring titles, MVP awards, All-Star selections, and recognition from his peers as the league’s most outstanding player.
But in 2024, after Edmonton lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, McDavid was named playoff MVP. In a moment that captured the essence of competitive sport, he did not come out to accept the award. His focus was not on individual recognition, but on the Cup itself. The message was unmistakable: the ultimate prize is not personal accolades—it is winning.
The instinct is nearly universal: individual achievement matters, but championships define the ultimate team outcome.
Even when we elevate individual achievement, the sport itself always points back to the same truth: The objective is to win.
110 Ways to Keep Score
At one point in my career, I was responsible for approximately 110 different sales incentive plans. There were legitimate reasons for many of them. Different businesses. Different sales roles. Different markets. Different products. Different expectations. Underlying all this differentiation was an entirely reasonable idea: Pay for performance means measuring everyone’s success individually.
The emphasis on individual measurement reflected a belief that employees should be rewarded specifically for what they produced. One leader put it more bluntly: she wanted her sales team to ‘eat only what they kill.’
So we measured…and measured…and measured. Every month, those plans required considerable coordination across Compensation, Finance, Operations, and the businesses.
Data had to be collected. Results had to be calculated. Accruals had to be developed. Questions had to be reconciled. Payments had to be validated. Then we did it again the following month.
One leader put it more bluntly: she wanted her sales team to ‘eat only what they kill.’
The problem wasn’t simply that 110 plans were difficult to administer. It was the tension between a company that preached ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’ (TEAM) while designing incentives that defined success primarily at the individual level.
A leader in Financial Planning & Analysis asked a more interesting question: ‘Are there really 110 different ways to define winning?’ He pointed out that many of those measures ultimately rolled into the same larger business outcomes: revenue, margin, operating income, profitability, and growth
We had become very good at measuring individual boats. Perhaps we needed to pay more attention to the tide.
What Does a Win Look Like?
Consider a defensive-defenseman in hockey--the players who make sure the scorers don't score. For years, Jaccob Slavin of the Carolina Hurricanes was widely regarded as one of hockey’s elite defensive-defensemen.
Much of his value came from things that never happened. A scoring chance that never developed. A pass that never reached its target. A shot that never made it to the goalie. A possession that changed direction. Those contributions are measurable—but not always neatly attributable to the eventual outcome.
Then, in 2026, after years of individual excellence, Slavin and the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. In the Cup-clinching game, Carolina’s first goal actually began with Slavin denying a Vegas zone entry and then sending a stretch pass to Taylor Hall, who scored.
Who created the goal? Hall? Slavin? The teammates who created space? The system that made the play possible?
Yes—and that’s the point.
Team outcomes are often the product of interconnected individual contributions.
Business works much the same way. Who is responsible for the $1 million deal? The salesperson who closed it? Marketing for generating the lead? Product for creating something worth buying? Operations for delivering it? Finance for structuring viable terms? Customer service for retaining the relationship? Leadership for funding and prioritizing the business in the first place?
Even when we elevate individual achievement, the sport itself always points back to the same truth: The objective is to win.
We can keep dividing the outcome into increasingly smaller pieces. Sometimes we should. But at some point, additional precision creates more complexity than value.
The Behavioral Lens
This is where incentive design gets interesting. Every metric communicates something. An incentive communicates something more: This is what we want you to care about.
If I pay a salesperson entirely on revenue, I should not be surprised if that salesperson pursues revenue—even when margin suffers.
If I reward an operating leader exclusively for reducing expense, I should not be surprised if investments get delayed—even when those investments would improve the business.
If I give every person a narrowly defined individual target, I should not be surprised when people optimize their individual targets—even when the organization needs collaboration.
When designing plans...we should ask: What behavior are we trying to produce, and what is the simplest measure that meaningfully reinforces it?
Total Rewards Principle 4, Behavior Follows Design, reminds us that a plan will encourage the behaviors it was designed to reward. That does not mean individual incentives are wrong. Far from it. Commission plans can be extraordinarily effective when individual production is clearly attributable and the desired behavior is well defined. Team measures can be powerful when outcomes are genuinely interdependent. Business-unit measures can align people with the economics they can influence. Enterprise measures can reinforce that regardless of role or function, everyone is ultimately working toward the same outcome.
When designing plans, we shouldn’t start by asking whether a measure should be individual or collective. We should ask: What behavior are we trying to produce, and what is the simplest measure that meaningfully reinforces it?
Why This Matters
Complexity is not free. Every additional metric has an administrative cost. Someone has to generate the data. Someone has to validate it. Someone has to calculate it. Someone has to explain it. Someone has to resolve disputes about it.
Employees must also understand what they are being asked to do. But the greater cost may be behavioral: Every metric creates direction.
The more individualized the measures become, the more we risk telling employees that their piece of the outcome matters more than the outcome itself.
That may be exactly what we want. But it should be intentional.
A company does not win because 500 employees each maximized 500 independent scorecards. It wins when the collective actions of those 500 employees produce the business outcome the organization needs.
That is why incentive complexity needs to earn its place.
When We Win, We All Win
The lesson I took from those 110 plans was not that individual incentives are bad. Nor was it that everyone should receive the same bonus simply because the company had a good year.
It was much simpler: Measure at the lowest level necessary—not the lowest level possible.
Differentiate where differentiation produces meaningful behavior. Use commissions where individual production matters. Use team measures where collaboration matters. Use enterprise measures when people need to look beyond their individual scorecards toward a shared outcome
And don’t confuse a performance-management problem with an incentive-design problem. If someone isn’t performing, the solution isn’t necessarily another metric or another incentive. Sometimes someone simply isn’t performing.
“Not all HR issues have a compensation solution. And sports figured this out a long time ago.
We can count every goal, assist, home run, touchdown, rebound, save, tackle, and pass. We can even celebrate individual excellence in those categories—and we should. Those statistics matter. They deserve recognition. They reflect excellence.
But they are not the goal.
The objective is to win. And when we win, we all win.
Key Takeaways
Individual performance and organizational performance are related, but not the same thing.
More measurement does not automatically produce better performance.
Complexity must earn its place—every metric should justify its behavioral and administrative cost.
Measure at the lowest level necessary, not the lowest level possible.
Match the measure to the behavior you want to drive.
Don’t use incentives to solve performance-management problems.
Keep the scoreboard visible, but never lose sight of what the scoreboard is for.
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