Who's Paid For This?

When to use it

Use it before any plan that needs other people to behave a certain way to work — a rollout that depends on a team adopting a new process, a negotiation, a request that relies on a vendor prioritizing you over their other clients.

When it's the wrong tool

It's the wrong tool for a decision that's entirely within your own control, where there's no other party's incentives to map in the first place. It's also easy to misuse as an excuse for cynicism — not every failure to cooperate is an incentive problem, and treating every colleague or partner as a purely incentive-driven actor will misread plenty of situations where the real issue is unclear communication, not motive.

An example

A manager rolls out a new reporting process and is surprised when the team quietly ignores it within a month. Mapped out: the team is evaluated on how many tickets they close, and the new process adds steps with no effect on that number. The plan asked people to spend extra time on something their own incentive gives them no reason to do. The fix isn't a reminder email — it's changing what gets measured, or shortening the process to fit inside the existing incentive.

How it works

1. List everyone the plan depends on to work.
2. Write down what each person is actually rewarded for.
3. Compare that to what the plan is asking them to do.
4. Fix any place the plan asks someone to act against their own incentive.

The tool below is free and needs no account. Nothing you type leaves your browser unless you save it.

Prefer to train the thinking behind these instead of reaching for a tool each time? The frameworks are explained free, and one drill takes about a minute.