They called his wife instead of doing their job

A few weeks ago, I wandered into a street bar during one of my evening walks. The place was packed, so I ended up sharing a table with a small group of strangers. We talked about weather, life, work — the usual things people talk about when they don't know each other yet and the drinks are cold. One of them turned out to be a production manager at a small manufacturing facility. I've always been curious how lessons from physical production compare to what I learned running a software agency, so we got deep into it pretty quickly.

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Then he told me a story that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

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His facility had an automated conveyor line that ran night shifts. Almost everything was robotized — in theory, the machines could run themselves. But regulations required human oversight, so they staffed the night shift with young part-time workers, mostly students, for a modest paycheck. So what’s the problem? Since everything ran on autopilot, the night crew had figured out there was nothing to actually do. So they slept.

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He ran surprise inspections. Showed up at 2am unannounced. Caught people sleeping. Talked to them about why they needed to be alert — because if something went wrong with a conveyor line, a human catching it early could be the difference between a quick fix and a catastrophic loss. They didn't care. The machines worked fine. The risk the guy was talking about felt theoretical. Their paycheck didn't change whether they were awake or asleep.

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So they got creative.

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Instead of finding ways to actually do their job — or even pretending more convincingly — they called his wife. Hinted that his late-night "work trips" might not really be about work… I sat there with my drink, staring at him blinking. Because I'd seen this exact pattern a hundred times in software. Different industry. Same human wiring.

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What people actually optimize for

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There's a reason Toyota gives every single worker on the assembly line a lever to stop the entire production. Pulling that lever costs tens of thousands of dollars per minute of downtime. But the damage from NOT stopping — a defective product reaching the customer, a safety failure, a cascading quality issue — can cost millions. That lever only works because every worker understands what's at stake. Not in an abstract "the company loses money" way — in a personal, concrete, "this is why my job matters and here's what happens if I don't do it" way.

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Those students on the night shift had no lever. They had no connection between their presence and any outcome they could see or feel. So their brain did what every human brain does: found the lowest-energy path. Sleep. And when that was threatened, find a creative way to remove the threat. Even if it meant blowing up someone's marriage. They weren't bad people. They just couldn't see a reason to care.

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I'd already learned this the hard way on a project that cost us over $30K — a team so emotionally invested in a client's product that they kept adding improvements nobody was tracking, until the invoices exploded and the client refused to pay. Good people. Great intentions. Zero connection between their enthusiasm and the financial consequences of their decisions.

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What I tried to fix it

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Around 2019, I read "The Great Game of Business." The story hit close: a tractor manufacturing company nearly went bankrupt because workers on the production floor had no visibility into how their decisions affected the company. They'd produce parts nobody needed because the task list said so and nobody updated it. Each person did their piece without seeing the whole picture. The solution in the book was radical transparency. Open the financials. Show everyone what the company earns, what it spends, what's left. Tie bonuses to outcomes people can actually influence.

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I went all in. Held a company-wide meeting over Zoom — invested significant time and energy getting everyone together. Started a monthly internal newsletter explaining our financial position in detail. Worked with the leadership team for weeks to design a bonus system tied to measurable contributions — personal and company-wide. We began publishing our P&L quarterly, showing which actions and decisions moved which numbers. I even considered creating what I called an "ego-black" tier — a group of standout contributors who'd get additional privileges for consistently going above and beyond.

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Then I got this response from a team member. I still have the message, dated October 31, 2019:

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"I'm against the ego-black idea. Given the company's ongoing challenges, the idea of segregation is terrible — it'll push people away. And the perks system is questionable too. No matter how many benefits you offer, someone else can always offer more. You should focus on making people dream of working here, like they dream of working at Apple or Google."

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Segregation. That's the word they used for a system designed to recognize people who genuinely contributed more.

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What I learned from the pushback

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My first reaction was frustration. This person didn't understand the complexity of running a business. Didn't see the financial pressures, the client losses, the margins disappearing because people treated every project like a passion project with no budget. And comparing us to Apple and Google? We were a tiny agency in a competitive market, not a trillion-dollar corporation with unlimited brand gravity.

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But sitting with it longer, I saw something useful underneath the defensiveness. This person was telling me, without realizing it, exactly what the book had warned about: when people can't see how their work connects to the company's survival, they'll resist any system that tries to make that connection visible. Because visibility means accountability. And accountability means you can't just ride along anymore.

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The bonus system launched anyway. And it worked — not perfectly, not for everyone, but it worked. People who genuinely contributed started seeing their impact reflected in real numbers and real rewards. Some stepped up in ways I hadn't expected. And some people left. Or we parted ways. Because the system turned out to be a spotlight. When contributions are visible and tied to outcomes, the gap between people who carry weight and people who coast becomes impossible to ignore — for everyone, not just management. That was its real value. Not just motivation. Clarity.

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What I keep coming back to

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People aren't lazy because something is wrong with them. Our brains are wired to conserve energy. If there's no personal connection between effort and outcome — if the paycheck lands the same whether you sleep on the night shift or stay alert — most people will drift toward less effort. Not out of malice. Out of biology. The night shift workers didn't think about what happens if the conveyor breaks. My developers didn't think about what happens when unbilled hours eat the margin. The person who pushed back on the bonus system didn't think about what happens when contribution is invisible and free riders go unnoticed.

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None of them were bad people. They just couldn't see the thread between what they did and what it cost — or what it was worth.

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The founder's job isn't to force people to care. It's to build a system where caring makes sense. Where the connection between personal effort and personal outcome is visible, concrete, and real. Not a speech about company values. Not a pizza party. A structure where people can see: when I do this, here's what happens — for the company… and for me.

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Something to try this weekend:

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Before you design any bonus system or incentive plan, have a one-on-one with each person on your team. Not about performance. About them.

Ask: what do you actually want for yourself right now? More money because you're planning a family? More interesting work? Recognition? Learning something new? Stability?

Then ask yourself: does anything in how my business runs right now connect what they want to what I need from them?

If it doesn't, no amount of perks or penalties will close the gap. But if you can build even a small bridge between their personal goal and a measurable business outcome — that's when people stop sleeping on the night shift.

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And I am wondering: do the people on your team know how their daily work connects to the money the business makes — and to what they personally get from it? Or are they just doing tasks on a list, with no idea what any of it adds up to?

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‍P.S. That production manager at the bar? He told me he eventually solved the night shift problem. Not with more inspections. He tied a small bonus to zero-incident shifts and a pretty substantial bonus for an emergency stop. He literally rewarded them for stopping the production line. And they stopped sleeping on their shifts. Turns out, all it took to get rid of the laziness was for them to see a reason to care.