Line of sight: a favorite phrase of compensation professionals and an important concept in designing incentive plans (assuming you expect them to actually impact performance). But where did it come from and what does it mean?
Line of sight is an expression that has its origins in the military. In this context, it means "distance to target".
When we use the phrase in relation to employee motivation and rewards, it is defined as an employee's perceived ability to affect a particular performance metric. Why does this matter? Because the whole point of most incentive plans is to focus employee attention and effort on making some type of improvement happen -- more revenues, greater profits, more satisfied customers, etc. If you choose a measure of improvement and base incentive awards on it, but the typical employee doesn't believe that there is anything he/she can do to influence that measure, what outcome can you expect? A lot of people sitting on their hands (figuratively speaking), hoping for their incentive ship to come in.
So how do you shorten line of sight and engage employees in making a difference? It usually has less to do with finding that one magical measure and more to do with communication and education. You say that your organization needs to generate more profit, but most employees don't understand how the business makes money? I say that you have your work cut out for you. The solution to your problem is about 10% incentive plan design and 90% training and coaching, and not necessarily in that order. When your employees show up each day knowing exactly what they need to do in their particular niche of the organization to drive profits up, then you can hang that carrot in front of them and expect things to happen.
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