Should I put my personal KPIs first or the budget allowance?
We had a client with a difficult ethical dilemma. Her personal KPIs were to achieve the project within a certain budget and a certain time. However, she also had to sign lease conditions and agree on the fitout allowance from the landlord. These conditions both had several poison pills which would cost her company a lot of money in the long run, both during the lease and at exit lease with a brutal make-good clause.
The client’s dilemma was, If I achieve my personal KPIs, I achieve advancement (in terms of meeting my CFO’s current objectives) and I’ll be in a good position for promotions in the future.
OR
Do I take it to the legal counsel and point out all these lease problems, poison pills that Icon Interiors has highlighted? They will cause the project budget to increase outside of the budget that I’ve been given from my head office as a result of the cost of these clauses being removed.
This is a personal decision that you may be forced to make when your KPI’s do not mesh with doing the best for the company. You could achieve your personal objectives and move on with your career, leaving hefty costs to be borne by your company in the future. Maybe this isn’t so much of an issue for you as HO is in another country, you have a remote CFO, the company is very large and you have no personal loyalty to the people at the top. Perhaps you don’t want to compromise your personal KPI’s to make it a prudent decision in the company’s best interests.
This is an issue that needs raising. It happens all the time when there’s fitout allowances made by the landlord, which might make you think, well, that’s enough money to move in. Often the fitout allowance, excludes the cost of air conditioning, fire services and hydraulics, which is plumbing. That can add another 20% of the total project cost to the costs in some conditions.
What would you do? Do you want to investigate and ask the hard questions to save your company a lot of money in the long term OR just roll with it so you can fit in with your project budget?
Get it right with the legal counsel to save your company a lot of money in the long run, and then ask the tough questions to the CFO. We need a bigger project budget. This is more effective in the long run. What would you do?