The two hardest things in the world are: first, getting your money into my pocket; second, getting my ideas into your head. These involve two core factors: the pursuit of interests, where nearly everyone wants to maximize their gains; and the symmetry of understanding, where almost everyone views the world through their own eyes, analyzes existing or future affairs with their own experience, and understands others with their own thinking patterns. Because people occupy different positions, their perspectives differ, and their understanding of affairs naturally varies. This is what we often call asymmetric understanding, which is also the root of disputes. Symmetry and asymmetry can sometimes be good things. For example, all business opportunities in the world arise from information asymmetry, but sometimes they are troublesome: asymmetric understanding brings many difficulties in understanding and communication, and most personnel management problems also stem from this asymmetry.
In the workplace, there is a problem that arises from the intersection of these two core factors: when bosses and employees view the balance between salary and work effort, because they are not on the same level, their thinking and value orientations naturally differ greatly. Bosses tend to think that employees should work hard and achieve results, and then the boss will reward them accordingly, promoting and raising salaries as appropriate. It is normal to give raises to employees who create more wealth for the company. Employees, on the other hand, see it differently: they hope to receive a better salary package in advance, which will effectively motivate them to perform better or invest more in their work. In short, this is the contradiction of "work hard first, then get a raise" versus "get a raise first, then work hard." Many bosses and employees have been at odds over this contradiction, often resulting in a lose-lose situation: the boss does not gain more value from the employee, and the employee does not achieve better returns.
To analyze specifically why bosses and employees conflict on this issue, let's use an example of a salesperson's basic salary and year-end bonus:
How bosses view the basic salary and year-end bonus of sales staff:
Bosses have two characteristics when viewing problems: they look at the overall picture and the long term. Therefore, most bosses believe that sales is a long-term systematic project. To achieve good sales returns, it requires many preliminary groundwork and preparatory tasks. These preparations need to consider many links, and each link must be done well and solidly to integrate into an excellent sales system. Only through this system can good sales returns be generated. So sales staff should have long-term and holistic thinking and actions, which will bring good returns to the enterprise and to themselves. As for bonuses for sales staff, it is not a problem; the key is how much benefit and profit the employee creates for the boss. The better the employee performs, the more the boss gives. But "don't release the hawk until you see the rabbit"—before seeing the benefits brought by the employee, the boss will not offer good treatment. Therefore, many bosses offer low base salaries to sales staff, with the bulk in bonuses and year-end bonuses, focusing on long-term overall returns. Moreover, putting the bulk at year-end also serves as a constraint on sales staff; if something goes wrong midway, there is something to offset. To strengthen this leverage and control employee turnover, many bosses even defer the year-end bonus to the following year. This salary structure largely reflects the boss's thinking pattern.
How sales staff view the basic salary and year-end bonus in sales positions:
Sales staff also have two characteristics when viewing problems: they look at the short term and individual links. Due to their different positions, most employees do not have the same level of thinking as bosses; they lack the ability to consider all issues and their relationships from a global perspective, and they do not pay much attention to long-term overall returns. For example, most people are concerned about what the market will be like next month, but few sales staff care about market trends two or three years down the line. From a safety perspective, sales staff are more concerned about short-term realistic returns, that is, tangible things in front of them: such as base salary and monthly bonuses. Ideally, they would have a higher base salary, with money safely in hand each month. A higher basic salary naturally brings out work enthusiasm and passion. As for the year-end bonus, they often feel it is like the moon in the sky—visible but untouchable, somewhat unreliable. The money is in the boss's hands; whether it is paid, how much, is up to the boss's word, which inevitably causes worry. Moreover, sales work itself has high turnover; you might pack up and leave any day, and then the year-end bonus is gone.
From the perspective of links, sales staff mostly only care about their own small patch, focusing on sales and payment collection. They generally do not engage with aspects not directly involved, such as developing and nurturing potential customers, pre-warming new markets, or other links that require investment but do not yield immediate returns. For example, they are reluctant to put effort into building and strengthening the sales network in their area, even though these links are essential for long-term sales returns. Because the payoff period is too long, they naturally find it hard to take these links seriously.
In fact, many bosses believe that if they do not hold the bulk of the year-end bonus in their hands: first, they lack leverage over sales staff and the means to create hope; second, if sales staff have problems, it serves as a provision for risk. The different perspectives of sales staff and bosses on year-end bonuses lead to different behavioral consequences, potentially planting hidden dangers in many areas. According to the operational characteristics of current domestic enterprises, the most valuable asset in a company's hands is a high-quality sales network spread across various markets (after all, we are still in an era dominated by channel orientation). Many sales staff, in order to obtain monthly sales bonuses, often adopt short-sighted methods, at the cost of degrading channel quality (e.g., cross-region dumping), damaging company reputation (e.g., over-developing customers), and greatly increasing distributor operating costs (e.g., forcing inventory). These costs are hidden and hard to detect without deep investigation. Using such problematic and risky sales to exchange for that month's bonus, over time, what happens to the quality of the company's sales network?
The above is just an example of how asymmetric understanding of sales work between sales staff and bosses leads to different behaviors to protect their own interests, with the result that both bosses and sales staff may suffer.
When the thinking of bosses and employees cannot be unified, one side must choose to step back; otherwise, both will suffer as in the above case. Neither side gains much advantage. However, in most enterprises, the boss is in an absolutely dominant position, with highly concentrated control. How to manage is, of course, the boss's say, and they disdain communicating with employees. The asymmetric understanding between bosses and employees first manifests in the issue of recognizing and distributing interests, which is also the most frequent problem in enterprise personnel management. So when facing this contradiction caused by asymmetric understanding, the author believes: as employees in a weak position, they should first consider making a concession. It is obviously not good to confront a much stronger opponent. After all, employees come out to work primarily for the salary; personal value realization and skill improvement are matters for later. They must first settle the basic understanding of salary, conform to the enterprise and the boss; otherwise, how can they talk about future development?
The boss goes left, the employee goes right. When the employee does not yet have the strength to make the boss go right, follow the boss to the left first: work hard first, then strive for a raise with achievements.
Author: Pan Wenfu Born into a private business owner family, managed a family-owned distributor company for many years, during which he also served as business manager and trainer in several manufacturing enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and the integration of demobilized military personnel into private enterprises. He has continuously broken down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and keeps updating his material collection and solution updates.