Bell Curve Compensation IS an Anti-Pattern

I’ve been reading James McGovern’s Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership for some time now. I have to say, I disagree with James on a lot of things (for example…), but his entry today on ‘bell curve compensation’ is spot on. Just how do you compensate employees fairly where there are some teams of superstars, some ‘normal’ teams and some composed entirely of dim bulbs?