Blog Post 9: Principle-Agent model triangles
This variation of the principle-agent model is actually a significant problem that I faced when working as a swim instructor a few summers ago. The two principles that I had at the time were my boss who coordinated the private lessons that we scheduled, the parents of the children that I was teaching. These private lessons were scheduled to be half an hour and the parent is instructed to pay before entering the pool. Each lesson is a flat rate with no discounts given for multiple lessons. It is also the same rate for multiple children to be in the same lesson. As the agent, I was expected to be there 15 minutes early to collect equipment, formulate a lesson plan and then mark out an area of the pool for the lesson to take place in. The pool had to be claimed, because these lessons often occurred during free swim hours at the pool.
The conflict between the principles idea of high and low effort usually revolved around the amount of time that the lesson consumed. Even with the 15 minutes of preparation, the lessons often didn't start until 10 minutes after they were scheduled. From parents being late, the children needing coaxing to start the lesson and conflicts with the areas of the pool that I had claimed, many things could go wrong. Whether it was my fault or the parent's, I always tried my best to make the lesson at least 30 minutes and I would often go as much as five minutes past that so we could squeeze in a quick game at the end. This meant that after cleaning up and talking with the parents afterwards, I was sometimes clocked in and paid for nearly an hour. This was something that my boss didn't like.
Eventually I had to sit down with my boss and explain that I didn't feel like I could realistically be clocked in for only 45 minutes (the maximum that she thought was acceptable) and keep the parents happy as well as give the children a good lesson. In particular, there was one special needs girl that was eight years old that I was working with. She had symptoms of both ADHD and autism that made getting her attention and her focus was difficult. While she loved some aspects, such as jumping in the pool, diving for rings and swimming for extended times underwater, she really disliked things like practicing different strokes or learning to float. Usually able to leverage this by incentivizing what she didn't like with what she did (ex. We do two laps of breaststroke, then we can dive for a round of rings). However, on the bad days, we were often just starting to make progress once the half an hour mark hit. Some of the tougher lessons would extend closer to an hour before I felt like she had really made progress.
In these cases I was adamant about needing more time and my boss agreed. The agreement that we came to was that I would only be clocked in (and paid for) 45 minutes for each lesson, but that I could continue the lesson a small amount past that and she would turn a blind eye. This worked well for the rest of the summer, other than one time that I really abused this and stayed well over an hour with the student mentioned above. In the end I was able to satisfy both principles by absorbing the blow myself.
I don't think that my case could have been solved by ignoring either of the principles. Many of my students scheduled private lessons because they had been in my group lessons and saw that I had a little more patience and was willing to work with the children who were a bit more difficult to work with. I think that by cutting the lessons short or not making them the time that they needed to be, the parents would have changed their opinion and most likely cancelled the lessons. On the other hand, I don't think that I could have ignored my boss. In the end, she was controlling enough that I probably would have been fired over this issue if I continued to ignore her. In the end I think that the only other viable choice was to cancel all of my private lessons and I didn't want to do that half way through the summer. I both enjoyed the extra money and had personal connections with the children and parents at that point. The slight pay cut was worth the additional money I was still getting and the opportunity to not disappoint them.
The conflict between the principles idea of high and low effort usually revolved around the amount of time that the lesson consumed. Even with the 15 minutes of preparation, the lessons often didn't start until 10 minutes after they were scheduled. From parents being late, the children needing coaxing to start the lesson and conflicts with the areas of the pool that I had claimed, many things could go wrong. Whether it was my fault or the parent's, I always tried my best to make the lesson at least 30 minutes and I would often go as much as five minutes past that so we could squeeze in a quick game at the end. This meant that after cleaning up and talking with the parents afterwards, I was sometimes clocked in and paid for nearly an hour. This was something that my boss didn't like.
Eventually I had to sit down with my boss and explain that I didn't feel like I could realistically be clocked in for only 45 minutes (the maximum that she thought was acceptable) and keep the parents happy as well as give the children a good lesson. In particular, there was one special needs girl that was eight years old that I was working with. She had symptoms of both ADHD and autism that made getting her attention and her focus was difficult. While she loved some aspects, such as jumping in the pool, diving for rings and swimming for extended times underwater, she really disliked things like practicing different strokes or learning to float. Usually able to leverage this by incentivizing what she didn't like with what she did (ex. We do two laps of breaststroke, then we can dive for a round of rings). However, on the bad days, we were often just starting to make progress once the half an hour mark hit. Some of the tougher lessons would extend closer to an hour before I felt like she had really made progress.
In these cases I was adamant about needing more time and my boss agreed. The agreement that we came to was that I would only be clocked in (and paid for) 45 minutes for each lesson, but that I could continue the lesson a small amount past that and she would turn a blind eye. This worked well for the rest of the summer, other than one time that I really abused this and stayed well over an hour with the student mentioned above. In the end I was able to satisfy both principles by absorbing the blow myself.
I don't think that my case could have been solved by ignoring either of the principles. Many of my students scheduled private lessons because they had been in my group lessons and saw that I had a little more patience and was willing to work with the children who were a bit more difficult to work with. I think that by cutting the lessons short or not making them the time that they needed to be, the parents would have changed their opinion and most likely cancelled the lessons. On the other hand, I don't think that I could have ignored my boss. In the end, she was controlling enough that I probably would have been fired over this issue if I continued to ignore her. In the end I think that the only other viable choice was to cancel all of my private lessons and I didn't want to do that half way through the summer. I both enjoyed the extra money and had personal connections with the children and parents at that point. The slight pay cut was worth the additional money I was still getting and the opportunity to not disappoint them.
It is principal-agent, not principle-agent.
ReplyDeleteSo, if I'm understanding the situation, your solution was to donate some time and that made both principals happy. In that sense, your time was a buffer. Spending down a buffer is often the way to make a two- principals situation work.
The part of this that you didn't tell, but that would be relevant to consider here is whether the other instructors did and if they faced similar issues. If your solution was idiosyncratic, I can understand how the particular parents would like it (and the kids would too) but I don't really get how your boss would like this lack of uniformity. Was there something specific about your shift that made the solution more relevant in your case? Or were all lesson slots pretty much the same? Those are the sort of things that should matter here.
That's a good point. My case was a bit unique, compared to the other instructors for a few reasons. Firstly, I had a lot more private lessons that most other instructors. I had six or seven most weeks where as most other instructors usually had two or three at most. The other unique factor that I talked about was the way that I attracted these lessons. I only had this many lessons due to my commitment to taking the time for these more difficult to work with children, which meant that I needed this extra time, to maintain my level of coaching and I also attracted students that needed this extra time to get benefit from the lessons.
DeleteThe difference then was that even if the other instructors were taking an extra 15 minutes with their lesson, they were accumulating at max another 45 minutes worth of work. On the other hand, if I took an extra 15 minutes (often more) per lesson, I was clocked in for another two hours or more.
Due to this, I think the problem was somewhat unique to me, so short of making a vague group announcement I think I was the only one that this was really enforced with.
I enjoyed your commitment to teaching children how to swim. I feel many people aren't taught how to swim and therefore don't know how to swim. Or, had a bad experience with water and don't want to learn. Also, simply never having anyone devote time to teaching them. I would definitely consider you a high effort agent in this case as most people would probably not continue teaching if they were not getting paid.
ReplyDelete