Why Most Incentive Plans Fail—and How Thoughtful CEOs Get Them Right

My Guest

I’m joined this week by Stacey Carroll, who has spent substantially her entire career leading HR organizations across a wide array of companies, with a specific focus on compensation & benefits. She has also spent the past 14 years leading HR Experts on Call, a company she founded where she acts as an interim HR leader for small and medium-sized businesses.

In our episode today, we unpack several common challenges that leaders face when crafting incentive compensation plans, including: (1) Avoiding unintended consequences and people “gaming” the system; (2) How to balance individual goals vs. company goals vs. departmental goals; (3) How to incent people on company goals when the achievement of those goals falls largely outside of their control; (4) If or how to change a compensation plan if circumstances change materially within any given year; (5) How to manage changes in goals & targets across any two given years; (6) The balance between simplicity & detail; and (7) How to handle inherited employees whose salaries may fall outside of company-wide pay bands

Watch on YouTube


Listen in Your Browser

Why Most Incentive Plans Fail—and How Thoughtful CEOs Get Them Right In The Trenches


Listen on Other Platforms:

YouTube | Apple | Spotify | PocketCasts |


Episode Summary with Timestamps

  • 00:00 Stacy’s Career Journey in HR
  • 07:01 Understanding Incentive Compensation Plans
  • 10:12 The Importance of Control in Compensation
  • 13:06 Common Mistakes in Incentive Plans
  • 16:03 Challenges in Designing Effective Incentive Plans
  • 18:55 Balancing Individual, Departmental, and Company Goals
  • 22:07 Adapting Compensation Plans to Change
  • 25:01 Navigating Discretionary Compensation Plans
  • 34:07 The Value of Unexpected Rewards
  • 37:09 Challenges in Setting Compensation Targets
  • 41:21 Simplicity vs. Detail in Compensation Plans
  • 43:33 The Power of Non-Monetary Rewards
  • 47:17 Creative Solutions to Employee Retention
  • 50:29 Navigating Inherited Employee Compensation
  • 54:00 Structuring Salary Increases Fairly
  • 57:05 Differentiation in Talent Investment
  • 01:01:21 The Importance of Rest and Unplugging

Download a Written Transcript of Our Conversation

Access a text-based version of our discussion to highlight, copy or take notes by clicking on either of the buttons below


Thanks to our Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Oberle Risk Strategies⁠⁠⁠⁠, the leading insurance brokerage and insurance diligence provider for the search fund community. The company is led by ⁠⁠August Felker⁠⁠ (himself a 2-time successful searcher), and has been trusted by search investors, lenders, searchers and CEOs for over a decade now. Their due diligence offering (which is 100% free of charge) will assess the pros and cons of your target company’s insurance program, including any potential coverage gaps, the pro-forma insurance pricing, and the program structure changes needed for closing. At or shortly after closing, they then execute on all of those findings on your behalf. Oberle has serviced over 900 customers across a decade of operation, including countless searchers and CEOs within the ETA community.

This episode is brought to you by Boulay⁠⁠⁠⁠, the industry standard for Quality of Earnings reports, tax, and small business audit services. Over the past 20 years, Boulay has worked directly with hundreds of search funds from capital raise to exit, currently assisting over 150 funds in the search phase, another 125 in the operating phase. They work with Searchers across the entirety of the ETA journey: They perform financial due diligence and create QofE reports that your investors can rely on, they provide a full suite of tax services both for your search fund and for the acquired company, they perform the annual audits required by most debt and equity investors, and also perform outsourced accounting services, acting as a fractional bookkeeper and controller for those companies whose needs might not necessitate full-time in-house resources.


Discover more from

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading