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WORKBOOK — THE LUMINOUS GAINSHARE EMPLOYEE

Chapter I.07 · The Second Circle

For the person working inside a gainshare arrangement — where a defined share of verified improvement returns to the people who created it. This chapter is about how a practice spreads. Inside a gainshare, how a practice spreads is how the pool grows, which means the diffusion arithmetic is not background material. It is your pay.

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WHY THIS CHAPTER IS ABOUT MONEY, FROM WHERE YOU SIT

A gainshare pays on verified improvement against a baseline. Improvement comes from practices. Practices only reach the people who have to perform them by complex contagion — which means the size of your pool is determined, quite directly, by the shape of the network the improvement has to cross.

Put the two facts together and something follows that nobody will tell you in an induction.

Inside a gainshare, introducing two colleagues to each other is a compensated act.

The person who spreads a working method across three teams has raised the pool for everybody, including themselves, and has done it with an asset — their relationships — that costs no capital and appears on no budget. A gainshare is the one arrangement in commercial life that pays for network engineering, and almost nobody in one realises it.

The rest of this workbook is how to do that deliberately, how to make it countable, and what to ask for.

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PART ONE — DISCOVERY

Days 1–30: find where the practice is stuck

Exercise 1.1 — Find the practice that has stopped at one team (one week)

Somewhere in your organisation a method exists that works, is known to work, and has spread to exactly one team. That is the highest-value object you will find this year, and it is common enough that you should expect to find two or three.

Look in these places:

For each, write one line: this is worth £___ a period if it ran everywhere, and it currently runs in ___ of ___ teams.

You do not need the figure to be right. You need it to exist, because a number with a stated assumption starts a conversation and an opinion does not.

Exercise 1.2 — Map the network the practice has to cross (half a day)

List the teams it would have to reach. For each, write who in that team would have to adopt it first, and then answer one question about each of those people:

How many other people doing it do they have to see — and can they see two?

Almost always the answer is no, and the reason is structural rather than attitudinal: the teams do not overlap. The practice is not stuck because people are resistant. It is stuck because nobody in team B can see two people in team A. That is a solvable problem and it is solvable by you.

Exercise 1.3 — The appreciative team conversation (45 minutes)

Run this with your team, in these words:

"Think of a way of working we picked up from another team. Who did we see doing it, and how many of them were there before we tried it?"

Listen for the number. You will hear two or a couple of them far more often than one, and people will say it without noticing what they have said. Write down the names. You have just mapped the reinforcement paths that already work in this building, and they are the ones to use next time.

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PART TWO — THE ARITHMETIC

Days 31–45: compute what the spread is worth

Exercise 2.1 — Value the diffusion, not the practice (90 minutes)

The practice has a per-team value. The spread has a different value, and it is the one your pool is paid on.

  pool contribution  =  per-team improvement
                        x  teams reached
                        x  periods before the baseline resets
                        x  share %

Run it twice: once on the current trajectory, once if the practice reaches every team within two periods. The difference between those two numbers is what your network work is worth, and it is normally larger than the improvement itself — because the improvement is fixed and the multiplier is not.

Then check the third term, which is the one people forget. If your baseline resets annually, a practice that takes eighteen months to spread pays you for six months of one year and nothing thereafter. Baseline ratcheting turns diffusion work into unpaid labour, and it does it silently. Find out what your scheme does. If nobody can tell you, that is the finding and it is worth more than this month's statement.

Exercise 2.2 — The hazard, for your own recruiting (45 minutes)

The Bass model gives the pull on the next undecided person as (p + qF)(1 − F). Using the meta-analytic means p = 0.03 and q = 0.38, in a team of twelve:

The first colleague who joins you slightly more than doubles the pull on everyone else. No subsequent recruit ever moves the rate that much again.

So spend your effort accordingly. One well-chosen person early beats five later, and the arithmetic is not close. Write down who your one is.

Exercise 2.3 — Find the gap in your own team (45 minutes)

Write every team member's name and your honest estimate of their threshold: how many others they would have to see doing it first.

Sort them. Find the value at which nobody sits. That is the gap, and it is what is actually stopping the practice — not resistance, not culture, not communication.

The chapter's demonstration is worth reproducing on your own list:

  circle A   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11     mean 5.500  ->  12 of 12
  circle B   0  2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2  2 11     mean 2.583  ->   1 of 12

Circle B is more than twice as eager on average and never moves. If your team looks like B — nearly everybody willing once two others go, and no route to two — then you and one other person are the entire intervention, and no amount of explaining will substitute.

Exercise 2.4 — The honest negative (30 minutes)

Write the strongest case against your own diffusion effort. Really write it.

Common honest negatives, any of which may apply:

• The practice works in your team because of one person's skill, not because of the method. Spread it and it degrades, and the pool falls while everyone believes it should rise.
• The practice shifts cost rather than removing it — to another team, to maintenance, to next year. In a gainshare this is worse than useless, because it is paid for once and charged for twice.
• The improvement is being achieved by deferring maintenance, which is drawing down a stock and reporting it as a gain.
• The spread is real and the measurement cannot see it, so nobody is paid and everyone concludes the effort was wasted.

Bringing one of these forward yourself, with the arithmetic, is the fastest way to be taken seriously by the people who run the scheme.

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PART THREE — DESIGN

Days 46–70: make the uncounted countable

Exercise 3.1 — Choose the second adopter properly (two weeks)

Not the person who agrees with you in the break room. Four criteria, in order:

1. They are checked with. Others ask their opinion unprompted. On a floor this is obvious: it is whoever gets asked "is this right?"
2. Their threshold is low but not zero. Somebody who agrees instantly is another enthusiast and their agreement tells nobody anything.
3. They are visible to your third person. Different shift, different team, different site — if your second and third cannot see each other, you have built a star and nothing will cross.
4. They have something to lose. Participation that costs nothing signals nothing.

Exercise 3.2 — Build the bridge that does not exist (one month)

Find the two teams the practice has to cross between and create one real shared task with one person from each on it, both names on the output.

Not a briefing. Not a demo. A task, with a deadline, that neither could complete alone.

This is the entire mechanism and it costs a few hours. Afterwards, each team has a person who can see somebody in the other team doing the thing — which is the second signal that could not previously arrive.

Exercise 3.3 — Make the diffusion itself a measured line (two weeks)

Here is the ask, and it is reasonable, specific and cheap:

"Add one measure to the scheme: the number of teams running the practice at the end of each period. Not as a target — as a counted fact, reported beside the improvement."

Why this is worth asking for, in the scheme owner's own terms:

• It is the leading indicator of the improvement they already pay for. Teams running it this period is next period's pool.
• It is cheap to collect and impossible to game meaningfully, because a team either does the thing or does not and both are visible.
• It makes diffusion work visible as work, which means the people who do it can be credited, which means more of it happens, which raises the pool.

If the scheme will not add a measure, ask instead for the one that costs nothing: that the names of the people who carried a practice between teams are recorded on the improvement's own documentation. Attribution is not a consolation prize. It is what makes the same people do it again.

Exercise 3.4 — The four lines for your own circle (one meeting)

If you are running a working group of any kind, write these on one page:

1. Who is in, by name, and how somebody joins.
2. How we decide, and what happens on a tie.
3. Who watches the shared thing, how often, reporting to whom.
4. What happens the first time somebody does not do what they said — small enough to actually be used.

Then hold the meeting where everybody says yes out loud, together. Not a circulated document. The simultaneous assent is the mechanism, because it is the only moment when every member receives reinforcement from every other member at once.

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PART FOUR — DESTINY AND DELIGHT

Days 71–90: make it hold, and get paid for it

Exercise 4.1 — Name the second owner of the practice (this week)

Every practice you spread should have a second person who can teach it, in another team, by name. Ask them explicitly. Give them the credit for the first team they carry it to — not a share of the credit, the credit.

This costs you nothing that is real and buys you the only thing that makes diffusion compound: a practice with two teachers spreads from two places at once.

Exercise 4.2 — Price your own continuity (30 minutes)

The chapter's charter arithmetic applies to you directly.

  median employee tenure (BLS, Jan 2024)              3.9 years
  implied constant hazard, ln 2 / median              0.1777 / yr
  P(the person carrying this is gone within 3 years)  41.3 %

If you are the only person who can teach the practice, there is a better than two-in-five chance it stops within three years — and everyone's pool falls with it. Say that sentence out loud in a scheme meeting. It converts "I would like a colleague trained" from a personal request into a risk statement with a probability attached, and those are received differently.

Exercise 4.3 — Ask for what the arithmetic says (one conversation)

Three asks, in ascending order of what they cost the firm. Ask for all three; expect the first two.

1. Recorded attribution. Names of the people who carried a practice between teams, on the improvement's documentation. Costs nothing.
2. A counted diffusion line. Teams running the practice, reported each period beside the improvement. Costs an afternoon a quarter.
3. A named second teacher, with time. Two hours a month for one other person to learn to teach it. Priced against a 41.3 percent chance of losing the practice entirely, this is the cheapest continuity insurance in the scheme.

Exercise 4.4 — Delight, which is not a soft word here (ongoing)

A practice people enjoy performing spreads without anybody pushing it; a practice that is merely correct requires somebody to keep pushing, and that somebody is you, indefinitely, unpaid.

So make the practice itself good to do. Shorter. Cleaner. Better tool. The bit that was tedious, removed. Then watch what happens to the diffusion rate, because you are now measuring it.

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KNOW YOUR SCHEME — A CHECKLIST

Answer each in writing. Any you cannot answer is this month's most valuable question.

• What is the baseline, and on what date was it set?
• Does it reset, ratchet on a published schedule, or hold for a fixed term?
• Is improvement measured net of the cost of achieving it?
• What is the share percentage, and of gross or net?
• What is the allocation basis — headcount, hours, salary-weighted, team?
• Is there a cap, a floor, or a carry-forward?
• Who verifies, on what date, and can you see their working?
• Is anything in the scheme measured about how a practice spreads?
• Is anyone credited by name for carrying a practice between teams?

The last two are this chapter's additions, and in most schemes both answers are no. Both are cheap to fix and both raise the pool.

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THE CONVERSATION, SCRIPTED

For the scheme owner, or your manager. Six sentences, in this order.

"There's a method in team four that's worth about £X a period and it's been in one team for eighteen months.

It hasn't spread because nobody in the other teams can see two people doing it — that's a structural thing, not an attitude thing.

I'd like to set up one shared task between team four and team seven, with one person from each, over about a month.

If it works, the pool rises by roughly £Y next period, and I'll show the working either way.

Two things I'd ask for: that we count how many teams are running it each period, and that whoever carries it gets named on the write-up.

Neither costs anything, and the second one is what makes somebody do it again."

No urgency, no complaint, no request for a decision on the spot. A number, a mechanism, a small ask, and an offer to be checked.

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APPRECIATIVE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR TEAM

1. What is the best working method any of us has picked up from another team, and how many people did we see doing it before we tried?
2. Which two people in this building, on different teams, already work well together without being told to? What made that happen?
3. What are we doing here that would raise the pool everywhere if the other teams could see it — and what would it take for them to see it?
4. If every practice we run had a second person who could teach it, what would change about how safe this scheme feels?
5. When has somebody here been properly credited for spreading something rather than for inventing it? What did that do to what happened next?