Back when I was in sales, I did lead development. That meant I had to locate a company that needed our consulting services, had the money in the budget to pay for it and actually wanted to meet with a salesperson. I got paid for setting up the appointments, and got a bonus if the salesperson closed the deal.

One of the first questions before taking a business development job always was, are my incentives based on things outside my control? I learned early on not to even consider working in a place where my commission was contingent on whether or not the salesperson closed the deal. "If you developed a good lead, the deal should close," one sales manager argued with me. Uh uh. Sales people screw up the close all the time, thus blowing up my commission. So that was a major issue.

And that's also why paying teachers on the basis of how the students perform is one of the stupidest, most insidious ideas the policy morons have ever concocted. Rather than address the very real issues of poverty and learning disabilities, they'd rather play with gimmicks like this "Student Success Act":