Defining your compensation philosophy is the starting point for making equitable, consistent pay decisions that are scalable. A little extra work up front will help not only the leadership team make good decisions, but will help managers take ownership of pay conversations with their team.

Early in my career, I was part of an internal consulting team working on the organizational design in a Fortune 250 company. Fast forward 10 years and I have been part of several restructures since. I’ve seen it both done really well and done really poorly. Here are five things I learned not to do in hopes that you can build your teams thoughtfully.