Even Linebackers Need Recognition

Greg Williams and his former New Orleans Saints organizational mates are in deep trouble. It is alleged that Coach Williams took the process of inspiring his players a step too far. No one would advocate rewarding a professional football player for hurting one of his union mates....we are unsure if this was the intent of what has been labeled a "bounty program". Everyone, however, would applaud a leader for offering his/her employees incentives for improving their performance.

The intended consequences of the New Orleans Saints unconventional incentive program are yet to be fully realized. There are, however, 2 key lessons learned from this controversy applicable to Employee Recognition:
Everyone Wants to be Recognized
It's Not About the Reward

Romo's Thoughts
"...it wasn't about the money, it was about the recognition..." - Bill Romanowski

A sports scientist nor even Roger Goodell can explain the importance of a post game moment. That moment in Pop Warner Football when the coach gives you a sticker to put on your helmet. It has nothing to do with the hit you put on your classmate and you did not intend to hurt him. For the first time in your life you spent 5 hours of every summer day in the hot sun with pads on and YOU overcame your personal limitations. Your parents were nowhere to be found, it was not soccer, and your dad was not the coach. For the first time in your life you did something on your own, you tried your hardest, and after days of uncertainty...the Coach picked YOU as the top performer. This, dear readers, is the premise of greatness. It is a result of great parenting, faith in the right things, and your recognition of your own ability! There is simply nothing better!

On a recent broadcast of the Jim Rome Show, Bill Romanowski explained it in terms that related to that which was documented above. Football players in this day and age make 10 figure incomes. They also risk their life every day. Put it in perspective: you are walking into a gun fight....a knife won't do!

Houses, Cars, and Attractive Women are elements of fame. They cannot make up for that moment when the coach brings you in front of the team to recognize YOUR effort! It is humbling and gratifying all at once. It is the place we all strive to get back to regardless of our income or status.

There is not a person on Earth who would not be humbled and gratified by a coach calling him/her in front of their team to get a sticker to put on their helmet. The sticker goes on the helmet and the recognition of your personal ability is never forgotten. You cannot assign a fiscal value to trying your hardest and knowing it made a difference.

Coach Williams did not encourage grown men to hurt their union mates. He wanted them to remember what it was like to try, succeed, and to be validated.

Value Is Interpretive
I once won a sales contest and our Vice President gave me a gift card. I bought diapers for my kids. Only they gave a shit! It was amazingly easy for our VP to ask her assistant to send me the card in the mail. There was no human interaction...my life's dedication had become a commodity. As I sharpened up my resume, my boss called me into a room, all of my teammates were there. They applauded for me. I had no idea what I had done. Without my knowing, everyone on my team had nominated me for an award that was globally recognized. I was the only sales professional to be given the reward. I stayed with the company for an additional 5 years because I didn't want my team to have to live with our Vice President.

Lance Armstrong said it best, "it's not about the bike". His life's dedication was to beat cancer and to inspire other people to do the same. To look a death sentence in the eye and win is far more important than any professional achievement.

Think about it....the best gift you have ever received did not cost more than any other. Someone took enough time to get to know you, they took time to find something that meant more to you than money, and they presented it to you in a fashion that made you remember what LIFE is all about!

We all need a sticker for our helmet. None of us would injure another to get it.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Trends in Employee Recognition

In May 2011 World at Work released a report on Trends in Employee Recognition. Much of the information in this report confirms what we know about this facet of employee rewards. There were a few head scratchers. Today, we will investigate the head scrathers...


Disbursement Strategy
70% of organizations offer 3 to 6 different recognition programs. This raises the question as to whether there is a synchronized strategy in delivering these various programs. Let's say the transportation supervisor rewards his/her crew for workplace safety while the sales team administers an incentive performance program. These programs are unique to their organizational sub-culture but they could benefit a larger organizational strategy. Why is safety limited to the operational workforce? Why are incentive programs limited to sales? If the right hand and the left hand are on different dials can the body actually work in harmony? The aforementioned programs run famously within their respective branches of the company but why can't the rest of the organization benefit from their success? If a tree falls in the warehouse, and nobody sees it, does it really count against your insurance premium?

Who's The Boss?
The majority of those surveyed for the World at Work report revealed that Senior Management was neutral to their Employee Recognition programs. We now discover an indifference from those in the boardroom in addition to the unsynchronized strategy. An employee works all weekend to complete a project, a rookie sales executive develops an up-selling initiative, an administrative assistant celebrates 30 years with the company....and the CEO is unaware. That is a shame!

Happy Anniversary
90% of organizations celebrate employees on their service anniversary. The most commonly distributed reward.......A certificate.

One Source - Total Recognition
The employee recognition trends of 2011 are not new. There continues to be a few areas of concern:
1. Inconsistent Strategy
2. Lack of Senior Management Attention
3. Poor Execution in Recognizing Employee Performance

Employee Recognition is the most important element of any organization. Employees leave companies because they feel their hard work is not validated. What makes your company unique? Are you celebrating your irreplaceable differentiators? Everyone in the company should be aware when an employee completes a special achievement. A certificate can mean the world to someone if it is presented in the right way by the right person.

The most meaningful professional reward I ever received is a watch. I'm sure it is valued at under $100 but to me it is worth a million dollars. It was presented to me by my peer's slightly after I was overlooked for a promotion. Their kindness revealed to me that I didn't need a title to be a leader, that my fellow team members mattered just as much as the area VP, and that my effort had changed people's lives for the better. My most treasured gift dispels a few preconceived notions:
* It's a logo-ed watch and I like it.
* The dollar value of any gift is insignificant.
* Praise from any angle feels good.

I've heard CEOs say they don't believe in rewarding people for doing their job...shameful! I've heard employees say they do not want to be embarrassed by being recognized for their achievements....that's a lie! Managers think employees would rather receive a Starbucks card than a watch...have you ever had a cup of coffee that you will never forget?

We humans need to know that our time and effort is worth something. We spend most of our waking hours at work so the least we can do is leave (or better yet arrive) every day with a smile....

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

The Employee Purpose Perspective

The catch phrase "employee engagement" has already become an over-used commodity. That's what we do. We grab on to a catch phrase and seek to wish it into existence. We buy a worn out strategy and hope for unique results.

Everyone wants employee benefits like Google. Everyone wants a corporate culture like Zappos. So they invite a team of consultants in, pay them a ton of money and say, "make my company like Google".

Newsflash: Google, Zappos and all great organizations got that way by taking chances. They did not ask for 'best practices', they created their own. They did not seek to copy a company culture, they took time to understand their employees and create relevance for them.

In the book Linchpin, Seth Godin challenges us to create an indispensable personal value by utilizing our irreplaceable skill. The Blue Ocean Strategy focuses not on bloodying the water in a competitive shark fight but to eliminate competition by charting new waters. Students go to Harvard to 'create careers' not to qualify themselves for a top paying 'job'.

There are no easy answers, there are no expert consultants, and there is no such thing as best practices. I cannot put a 'one size fits all' business plan on your desk and expect to change your organization. You have to try harder. You have to put aside perceived standards and roll up your sleeves. You have to challenge yourself to get up from your desk, get out into your hallways, and find the "IT" that exists there like no where else.

If you are not willing to do the emotional work....your company will never change. Stop wasting your money by paying an outsider to create the next soon-to-be irrelevant catch phrase. Stop paying people to energize your team with temporary motivation. Stop telling your employees to read a book in hope of creating a common organizational purpose.

Over the next several weeks we will review the roadmap for The Employee Purpose Perspective. A challenging 7 step self-analysis that any organization must invest themselves in to create a purpose driven culture. While the execution will be difficult, the premise is simple:
1. Collaboration not competition
2. Purposeful intent creates cultural perspective
3. Organizational initiatives must have personal relevance
4. Every directive must have a unique value proposition
5. Reward the willingness to embrace the impossible
6. Extend a personal mission to each employee
7. Professional purpose is a willingness to fulfill personal desire

Sound Impossible? Good! Let's start thinking about what is impossible and use the aforementioned 7 step process to make it reality.

If you are not ready to dedicate yourself to investigating what today seems completely unachievable, you cannot change your organizational culture.

The only way to enhance employee engagement is to do a deep dive into your culture and enhance daily.

There are no perfect metrics, no case studies, no benchmarking, no references, no best practices and a finish line does not exist. You will have to throw down your crutches and sprint through this process, every day!

If you are willing to change your organization, the lives of your employees, and the world for the better; stay tuned to this blog. If you are looking for easy answers, unsubscribe.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Show Up & Care

Why would anyone want to be a politician? To have your personal life opened up, to play audience to special interest groups and lobbyist, to constantly be under a microscope, for every decision to be questioned by the less talented...all for much less money than you made as a business leader?

As The Great Jesse Ventura put it, "If Not Me, Then Who?"

My skepticism of the position vs The Governor's optimism makes the case pretty clear:
There is Nothing Easy About Progress!

If everything was easy, we would all be drunk in the town square every day, celebrating our Utopia. We have all learned in recent times that the hours of thankless effort far exceed those spent celebrating in the sunshine. Therein lies our challenge. To put our heads down and progress knowing that the gold stars may be few and far between.

To develop the ability to win in the face of constant adversity with diminishing rewards is a task that less than 25% of American workers are willing to accept. When faced with the challenge of being Genuinely Engaged in your career you can ask yourself but one question:
"If Not Me, Then Who?"

Develop Metrics for Progress Beyond Results
Find Other Avenues
Know That the Willingness to Try Eliminates 75% of Your Competition

Encouragement in All Forms
In a recent survey I conducted regarding workforce engagement, respondents indicated that encouragement from one's peers is equally as important as that from one's manager. This is often because a Manager is caught up in finish line results...that's what pays the bills. There are metrics beyond revenue to get to revenue that when encouraged properly can produce long term success. Whereas, short term revenue may be a stroke of luck or a quick fix product dump.

It is vastly important for organizations to understand business critical behaviors more than just the results they produce. It is even more important to develop programming and training that enriches such behaviors instead of just analyzing results and brow beating assumed under-performers.

The Definition of Insanity
We have identified that life in business is not fair, especially in a floundering economy. Still businesses increase prices, increase quotas and figure that margins will justify themselves in accordance. The thought being....we don't need to produce if we can adjust what we currently have to make up for our lack of production. As such, your loyal customers suffer, your account support spends all day explaining unilateral decision making and your sales people make up for their lack of ability by selling the wrong products & services at the wrong prices to the wrong people....this is exactly how NOT to run a business.

We have to produce by means of DAILY development. Your goals are cemented, how you get there is up to you. Find new ways to penetrate the market, up-sell current customers, develop products and add value.

You can walk into a wall, run into a wall or find a pick axe and bust a whole in it.

Then Who?
A study by HR Solutions indicated that 25% of the workforce are engaged in their work. This seems like a high number. This means only 1 in 4 workers even care about the work they do....what an opportunity! If you know three quarters of the people you walk by every day don't even want to be part of the game, it should be really easy to win. All you really need to do is show up and care.

The odds are steep, the rewards diminishing and the future uncertain. The easy thing to do is give up. If you do then you open the door for the less skilled to take what is yours simply by default.

It is time to no longer accept what we cannot change and change it! To ignore the statistics that serve only to demotivate you, to set your own course, to derive hope from the ambivalence of others.

Show up, find a way and never stop moving forward!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Transparency

I am fortunate enough to spend my day helping organizations develop the strategy of appreciation.

Occasionally, I will hear people say - "we don't believe in recognition here"!

LIE!

Everyone wants to be recognized for what they do, everyone appreciates rewards, everyone needs a pat on the back for encouragement!

I understand the commodity employee recognition has become and the according stigma:
- It does not make sense to give a person a gift with a company logo on it or to select a gift for them that they do not want.

- If you are inarticulate in the way you recognize a person's achievement in a speech to their peers it has an adverse effect.

- If you force someone to participate in a contest in which they have no interest, it is nothing more than another task.

- If you ask me to pat someone on the back for a job that was done in mediocre fashion the nominator, recipient and the organization suffer.

- If I am able to order an expensive prize after 5 years of shitty work, that is nothing more than entitlement.


If you have made employee celebration a commodity you might as well:
1. Burn company money
2. Post a company mission statement written in morse code
3. Help your employees sharpen up their resumes





You cannot be transparent in the way you LOVE your people:
* Every employee must be personally engaged in the reward with which you empower them!

* When you speak of someone who you have manged for five years and you do not have the ability to inspire them to tears - you should be FIRED!

* The Reward should encompass a Choice!

* Everyone should have an Equal Opportunity to be Appreciated!

* The choice to participate should be an Honor not a burden.


In simplest terms, everyone is different. Your employee should be a contributing business partner specifically because they can do things NO ONE else can do.


Know What Makes Your People Unique and Celebrate accordingly!


Don't Forget to Remember!


Dave


references:
http://www.mcfrecognition.com/
http://twitter.com/davidkovacovich
www.linkedin.com/in/davidkovacovich

Exploration not Expertise

It is documented somewhere that 10,000 hours of work make you an 'expert' in any given field. I have also heard it said that if you read 5 books on any topic you become an 'expert' in your researched topical landscape. The problem I have with expertise is the seeming finality to the title. In a constantly developing world how can your proficiency in any given profession assure a timeline of 'end all, be all' knowledge. As if to insinuate there is a cap on knowledge acquisition.


In the world of Employee Rewards, tenure celebration has become synonymous with 'entitlement'. While I cannot envision a time when loyalty to an organization would not be celebrated, I do understand the sensitivity of human boundaries.

We All Want to Share!

Having spent nearly 10 years at a company I elected myself a voluntary mentor to every new recruit that walked through the door. I told him/her the unwritten rules of the company, industry and our operation....guess what? Nobody asked me. I thought because I had endured a highly competitive position for a long time that I knew the 'secret sauce' to success. However, by touting my tenure I came across two realizations:

* The Newbies saw my advice as regulation and no one likes to be tied down.
* Having been in the same position for 10 years without vertical movement was not exactly looked upon favorably.

In Unzip Your Soul, I have proposed to keep your head down in your first 6 months of employment at any given company. This advice has been met with a fair amount of criticism by the 'kick down the door' impact players. I understand the need to make a steady first impression but Bravado diminishes your accomplishments. Get in, be pleasant, take advice and let your results speak for themselves.

This entry level advise can also be conveyed to the elder statesmen (and women) in any given organization. A few things to consider:

* New Hires have a set of personal goals that may include surpassing your achievements.
* When you convey limitations you simply set the bar for New Hires to surpass.
* New Hires share your sentiment to ease into a relationship...
* If you know everything, they will respect that and reach out in due time.
* Wait to be consulted!

I don't believe there is such thing as 'entitlement' nor do I believe in the need to make a lasting first impression. The key to successful professional partnerships is ease of navigation. If you are receptive to new opinions without opposition you will be admired...whether it's your first day or your 10,000th hour on the job.

Be Graceful in your Interaction and people will come knocking for Advice.

Don't Forget to Remember!

- Dave

www.linkedin.com/in/davidkovacovich