HR-People performance and IRS-Taxation
As we get better with our language skills, this is not just semantics but also articulation and communication we also get better at equivocating. Not too long ago there was a debate in congress about simplifying the tax code. How did it end up getting so convoluted? What is a tax? I tried to look it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Tax:
· A charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes
· A sum levied on members of an organization to defray expenses
Simply put, it is a sum of money an individual or institutions pay for being associated with an organization, like a membership fee. When and how did it end up getting so complicated? Did someone tweak the system to foster personal interests? Or was it because we don’t understand how to measure performance and thus charge appropriately? Or may be it is simply a strategy to confuse what taxes really mean?
Back in the days when I studied Artificial Intelligence, one of the first things I learnt was Ockham’s Razor. The principle is attributed to the 14th century English logician William of Ockham. The principle forms the basis of methodological reductionism, also called the principle of parsimony or law of economy. Ockham’s Razor states that one should make no more assumptions than needed. When multiple explanations are available for a phenomenon, the simplest version is preferred. This directly leads me to a quote by Chesterton, “If you can’t convince them confuse them”.
I have seen the exact same thing with staff functions in organizations. People and performance measurement by human resources is much the same, marketing and IT suffers the same destiny in most organizations.
People performance measurement is not much different from the IRS tax problem as defined by human resource development organizations are across more dimensions than they ever were in the past. The process takes months to accomplish, at the end of it more people are dissatisfied than content.
Is the next role that of an internal performance consultant, like a tax attorney?
May be it is a mentor with knowledge of the loop holes in the system.
