A hundred people. A target of 36. What about the rest?
You run an employment contract. A hundred people out of work are referred to you, and the contract pays when someone reaches six months in work above the earnings threshold within 18 months. The target is 36. Four rounds, and the same hundred people in every round, so the only thing that changes is what you choose.
Your results
Every round you've played
Gold: outcomes by month 18. The dashed line is the target of 36. Everything above the gold dot is the rest: people the contract hasn't helped yet.
Step by step
Start where many contracts sit: advisers focus on the easiest third, in-work support stops once the start has counted, and everyone eases off at month 12. Then add one improvement at a time, in any order, and watch what each step adds.
Play all four rounds to see what each one teaches.
A target is a floor, not a finish line.
The lesson: hitting 36 still leaves 64 people out of work, and the money for every one of them is still on the table: benefits still paid, outcome payments never earned. Count the rest, stage by stage. The people closest to the line are the cheapest to win, and they're the ones a celebration forgets.
You've seen this game before: sales quotas, waiting-time targets, pass rates, and any contract that pays on a target.
Illustrative numbers. A hundred made-up people, none of them real cases. Each person's luck is fixed, so the same choices always give the same result.