Monetary Reward : A Destruction to Teamwork?

(This simple story was posted at one of the electronic discussion forum on "Reward, Compensation, Teamwork". It is observed that many organisations are overly indulged in the issue of "Reward, Compensation" to employee and loose touch with the "Teamwork towards what purpose?")

A car was stuck in mud on a country road in a village. The driver, a visitor to the country, called for help. 10+ villagers came with ropes, wooden planks, bricks, etc. They tried out various methods and strategies, they shouted together (in order to mobilise the team force) and pulled...... The car was back on the road.

It was a great TEAMWORK at that moment. All the team members had a Shared Vision : "To help the visitor's car back on the road". They had the satisfaction that the mission was accomplished.

The visitor was so grateful and touched. He offered a very large sum of money as reward to the villagers, and asked them to share among themselves. A real problem and fight erupted on the distribution of the large reward. Each claimed how difficult his effort was, or what sacrifice, what creative ideas, what leadership, etc. etc.

The visitor realised that this new problem was much bigger than his car problem.

Now the Shared Vision of the group (no more a team!) is "How big a portion of the cake must I get? Surely my portion should not be smaller than so and so..."

In any typical organisation, such reward distribution system is already cast in stone : CEO with millions $ a year, an operator with a fraction that of CEO a year.

In theory, many all know that no achievement, no accomplishment, be it small and temporary can be made without some sort of team work, yet unlike the villagers who could argue and fight over the reward distribution system, silent majority in organisation accepted the whole thing as fact of life in their heads, but not in their hearts.

When the organisation Shared Vision is confined to a squirrel store type of reward distribution system, where is room for a larger Shared Vision for a real TEAMWORK TOWARDS A GREATER PURPOSE? Should we then also get caught in the squirrel store arguing over compensation?

End.