You see clubs negotiate a player contract. Months of work. Front-loaded guarantees. Performance escalators. Loyalty bonuses. Image rights. Every clause crafted with surgical precision.

Then the same club hires a Head of Performance.

Job description. Some salary negotiation. Done.

This asymmetry keeps nagging at me.

Think about the leverage for a moment.

A world-class Head of Performance who extracts 3% more availability from your squad? That's worth millions in on-field outcomes. A mediocre one costs you that value silently. Every single week. You never see the wins that didn't happen.

The same logic applies to recruitment directors. Lead analysts. Commercial heads. Anyone whose decisions compound over time.

Yet across the industry, organisations treat player compensation as strategic art. And staff compensation as administrative overhead.

Brad Jacobs has built many billion-dollar companies across four decades. His insight is clear. Saving $100,000 on salary makes no sense when hiring second-best can cost you millions in outcomes.

He calls it understanding the "dynamic range of humans." If the best person in a role produces 10x the value of an average performer, paying them 2x more isn't generosity. It's arbitrage.

Charlie Munger told a story I can't shake.

FedEx struggled for years to get their night shift loading planes faster. They tried motivation speeches. Threats. Management oversight. Nothing worked.

The solution that fixed it overnight? They switched from paying by the hour to paying by the shift. Workers could go home when the job was done.

Human nature did the rest.

Munger makes it clear. "Never think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives."

Sport is full of these blindspots. Roles where different incentives could unlock untapped discretionary effort.

But paying well isn't enough.

Jeff Bezos warned against hiring "mercenaries instead of missionaries." He worried that the wrong incentives would attract people who stay for the wrong reasons.

Warren Buffett's approach at Berkshire: he distributes "merit badges, not lottery tickets." Bonuses tied to outcomes people can actually control. Not stock prices they can't influence.

The principle emerging across these builders is consistent. Pay generously but design incentives around controllable value.

Sport can't match tech salaries. But sport has levers tech doesn't.

Some organisations are starting to structure staff deals the way they structure player deals.

Back-loaded contracts with milestone unlocks. Lower base, but clear performance triggers that release significant upside. A Head of Performance could earn up to 30% above market by improving player availability.

Loyalty tranches. Guaranteed payments at year three and five. Conditional on tenure and a performance floor. This rewards the compounding effect of institutional knowledge.

Discretionary recognition pools. Small, fast-deployable cash for immediate impact. No waiting twelve months for annual reviews. Great work gets recognised in the moment.

Non-cash levers. A guaranteed seat at the leadership table. Direct access to the game. Public profile and industry recognition. For the right people, these aren't consolation prizes. They're decisive.

The question worth sitting with: which roles can you afford to fill with B-players?

The honest answer is usually fewer than you think.

Start with an audit this quarter. List the five to ten positions where average performance costs you, where leverage is highest. Compare current packages against what an A-player would actually command. Identify the gaps.

Then pick one hard-to-fill role. Build a creative offer: base plus milestone bonus plus loyalty tranche. Test it. Track whether it changes who says yes.

When organisations get serious about staff pay, like they do with player deals, the advantage compounds.

You'll see discretionary effort from day one. But the real gains show up in year two, year three, and beyond. World-class talent compounds. By then, competitors are still wondering why they can't attract the same calibre of people.

Compensation isn't a cost centre. It's the most flexible lever you control.

The only question is whether you're using it.