Marissa Levin

Founder & CEO

Information Experts

www.successfulculture.com

Marissa Levin is a natural communicator, and visionary. She is a nationally known speaker and writer, and Founder & CEO of Information Experts, a global strategic communications firm that has won more than 75 awards for strategy, creativity, and leadership.

Marissa has also been the Chief Culture Officer (CCO) of Information Experts for 17 years, and takes personal ownership for ensuring the culture within Information Experts is healthy, challenging, fun, and learning based. This culture acts as the primary reason for tremendous employee retention, with many employees still with the company for close to a decade or longer.

When it comes to driving forces, even the most highly motivated individuals can’t resist a carrot dangling on the end of a stick. But which incentives work best in the modern corporate world where quick thinking is a must and competition is fierce, yet results may take a long time to show? In the early twentieth century, executive pay packages reflected capital success and the corporations with the most money called the shots. Change came in 1919 with the creation of the first talent-based organization, United Artists, in the movie industry. According to Roger Martin, Dean of Strategic Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in his Capital Vs Talent 2 article, “The new approach was to utilize the differentiated talent of the strongest –whether actor, athlete, CEO or fund manager – to create a compensation structure that turned laborers into members of the capital class.” Unique skills that were difficult to quantify increased the bargaining power of talented artists and business high-flyers. By 1963, strategic consulting firms were emerging as a way to harness and market these qualities to the corporate business world.
The result was that company directors had to come up with incentives to attract and retain talent. Both monetary and non-monetary options were used. Stock-based compensation was implemented widely, but the process was flawed because performance was reflected in the expectations market not in reality and too many risks taken resulted in short-term profits.  Alex Edmans and Xavier Gabaix determined value based incentives were best in their article on voxeau.org. They advocated using a mix of deferred (cash) compensation and restricted stock. Martin suggested giving royalties on real results like those given to designers, inventors and musicians. Intermediate and deferred payouts were recommended in an article in cimaglobal.com to create long-term benefits and increase value to shareholders. To turn this trend into a strategic advantage for your business, consider the following. C-suite leaders must be motivated differently. Long term goals can be broken into milestones. Board members need motivation too. Make motivation a factor when hiring in the C-suite. Lastly, keep motivation focused on the individual.