You've likely heard the term "misaligned incentives" a bit more lately.

Watch: Misaligned incentives in Key Account Teams

You've likely heard the term "misaligned incentives" a bit more lately. The phrase is used frequently in podcasts when describing the conflict of AI founders racing to build super intelligence and the impact this breakthrough innovation could have on humanity.

They are saying that these frontier models could eventually be smart enough to cure diseases and run billions of robots and agents 24/7, at 10X, 100X, maybe 1,000X the intelligence of the smartest human who ever lived.

That sounds great. We live longer. We work only if we want to. Robots handle the tasks we don't like.

At first glance, the incentives seem to align. Take a closer look.

What about those of us living in the world of 2026? A world that is built where humans still do most of the work and free markets create the chance to build wealth.

Is the company building the disruption responsible for its impact on humanity? Under free market capitalism, its incentive is to build products people will pay for. That's how the system works. And there is demand, even with the unknown risks.

Misaligned incentives.

In 1975, management scholar Steven Kerr gave this problem a name: "the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B." We pay for one behavior and hope for another.

Key Account Teams live this every year.

Most are paid to grow revenue quarter over quarter, often 10% or more over the prior year. In my experience, the bonus can be 50% to 150% of total compensation. Some companies add incentives for profit or renewals, but those carry far less weight. So the #1 goal is clear: beat where the account was 12 months ago.

Gartner found 49% of account managers have a single revenue goal that makes no distinction between keeping an account and growing it.

Here's what that can look like.

We had a rep whose largest customer was buried in a backlog. Demand for our services was extreme. The rep raised margins as high as the customer would pay, without a conversation. The rep's numbers soared.

When demand normalized, the customer saw what had happened. They felt betrayed. They cut their volume by 90%, and competitors took most of the share we lost. The rep was eventually let go.

The rep hit the number. The partnership paid for it.

So ask yourself:

If your team hits its growth goal in your largest account this year, would the customer say it was a successful year with your company in the areas that matter most to them?

How would you know? What would they say if you asked them today?

The Vitality Index measures the health of a key account partnership across 7 domains and 21 growth drivers, so your team can see whether its growth is building the partnership or spending it. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation and ask for a demo.