Punished for Good

There's an odd concept that I haven't even really gotten my head around why it's so common nor have I really any great solution for how one might solve it. Perhaps open awareness is a good place to start.

It's the concept that somehow we get punished when we do good. Perhaps this is a concept where my parents would tell me that life isn't fair!

Here is an example...

How many of us have a budget to maintain. Say we're given $100K for a project and we manage it well and end up landing the project at $80K. Well done right? What happens more often that not is that our budget is cut next year down to $80K and while we were good stewards it seems as though we've been punished.

I could list several other examples but this one makes the point that we're trying to address just fine. But what can we do with this? How can we reward stewardship the right way? How can we encourage people to be good stewards?

The greater concern here is that by mishandling stewardship rewards then we almost bread poor stewardship. It's human nature to know that people are going to just try and spend the full $100 if it's going to be decreased if they don't... even if they don't need to spend it all.

I'll end on stewardship and it's role throughout our lives. We must seek to be good stewards and part of that principle comes from supervisors rewarding stewardship well.

Maybe there's opportunity for us to use that other $20K toward another project and now we see stewardship birthing fresh ideas and impact.

Food for thought...