You say that as if "align incentives such that productivity gains are rewarded" isn't one of the hardest, most fundamental problems in all of organization and management.
Because it isn't. Aligning incentives is really easy.
"If you do something that causes a productivity gain worth X, I will give you some reward with a value Y where Y is less than X but greater than the cost Z of the effort you needed to put in to generate the productivity gain. If the cost Z would be equal to or greater than X then don't do it."
Managers make their work immensely harder on themselves by unnecessarily adding the constraint that they can't get people to do things by paying them fair amounts to do them. Now certainly there are some highly skilled managers out there who can still succeed despite this handicap, and if that earns them a fat paycheck then good for them. But if you don't have those skills you don't get to excuse your failures with an inefficiency you created for yourself.
"If you do something that causes a productivity gain worth X, I will give you some reward with a value Y where Y is less than X but greater than the cost Z of the effort you needed to put in to generate the productivity gain. If the cost Z would be equal to or greater than X then don't do it."
Managers make their work immensely harder on themselves by unnecessarily adding the constraint that they can't get people to do things by paying them fair amounts to do them. Now certainly there are some highly skilled managers out there who can still succeed despite this handicap, and if that earns them a fat paycheck then good for them. But if you don't have those skills you don't get to excuse your failures with an inefficiency you created for yourself.