Inspiration Conversation

I’m an unapologetic fan of using Abraham Maslow’s well known “Hierarchy of Needs” as a tool to explain and position why Recognition and Reward Systems are valuable.  Are there other theories and models that can apply as well?  Absolutely … but here’s why I’ll stick with Maslow:

In broad strokes, Maslow says that individuals deal with life by meeting needs in this order 

1. Physical (“Am I safe and do I have something to eat and a place to sleep?”)
2. Social (“Do I have friends I can talk to and spend time with?”)
3. Esteem (“Do other people notice when I do something good?”) and
4. Self Actualization (“Do I matter?”)

He states that the higher level needs cannot be met unless the lower level needs are met first.  A mental walk through history will provide example after example of how this looks in real life (for an expanded explanation of how this translates to the work place, read more about Employee Engagement).  Can someone regress “down the pyramid”?  Sure – when people go through difficult financial times, they become more concerned about physical needs, they have less time for social occasions and fewer thoughts regarding self esteem – they’re focused on meeting basic needs.

All this matters to people responsible for organizational “people issues” because it’s a good template to use to understand and implement recognition and reward strategies.  If you think about what individuals are trying to get done with their life, and then use the tools at hand in your work environment to advance their cause, the people in your company will stay longer and they will contribute more.    

A RRS is designed to contribute to organizational success by driving the behaviors and performances valued by the organization.  An RRS accomplishes this by appealing to the individual needs that employees have for an understanding of where they fit and how they are valued. 

Read the previous two sentences a few more times…

Now, consider the size of the organization you work for.  Imagine that your job was to determine the individual needs of each of the employees that work for your organization and to create a method:

• To determine if those needs were being met
• What the employee thought about how the needs were met
• When an employee’s thinking/needs changes or they have a bad day (or bad month)

How you will track that and adjust for their changing needs?

Do you really want that job?

Is it really possible to perform that job, particularly in an organization with more than a few dozen people in it?  I don’t think it’s an achievable goal and that’s why a RRS is valuable.

I believe that the highest and best use of an RRS is the communication of organizational culture and behaviors to the employees of the organization.  Of the other ways to communicate – internal communications, intranet, newsletters, the water cooler, etc – a systematic approach to recognition and reward is the best method to determine the degree to which employees hear the message and, more importantly, what they think about the message. 

More and more companies are opening the doors of their boardroom, their executive offices and even their books so that the marketplace can gain an honest perspective on the benefits of engaging with the company (the whole chain from prospective employees through retirees and prospective customers through loyal clients).  I like the trend and I’m convinced it will continue – primarily because of individual access to information and the ease of personal communication.  Effectively, there’s nowhere to hide organizational mistakes/dishonesty/malignancy and, on the other hand, it’s easier to find “cool places and cool stuff” to engage with. The best run companies are places where everyone understands, believes in, and acts on consistent internal intelligence.

As organizations get more comfortable adapting to the growing openness of today’s business culture, they’re faced with the challenge of communicating internal intelligence and organizational goals to all employees.  OK… not so difficult in smaller companies – there’s a short line of sight to where the company is going and what the implications are for individual employees.  If there are questions, people have easy access to leadership.  This is a difficult challenge when the organization is large and more complex. 

There’s an initial issue with the tactics of simply getting the message out in a timely, creative way that will be heard by all employees.  The larger the organization, the more intense this effort must be.  This is a real communication issue and the most obvious one to address, but I think there’s another challenge that may be more significant and is often overlooked.  That challenge is accountability for execution on the delivered internal intelligence.

Execution is a two-way street - the company is accountable to deliver the culture, strategy, structure and tools that produce great work; employees are responsible to use that corporate platform to execute their respective roles.  In today’s fast moving, fast changing business environment, it can be very difficult to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the direction of the organization and is pulling in that direction.  This is where an organizations Recognition and Reward System can help.

If your RRS is aligned with culture and goals, and if everyone in the organization can be reached with the RRS, you’ve now created an accountability system that will regularly reinforce the internal intelligence related to the behaviors, practices and accomplishments that are valued within the organization.  You’ll be in a position to celebrate accomplishments as well as to make timely course corrections when there’s a change in internal intelligence. 

People want to engage with cool places and cool stuff…  Use the power of a well designed RRS to create organizational accountability to deliver results on the internal intelligence that the company works so hard to develop.   

Every year, I get together with classmates from the Oxford/HEC Coaching and Consulting for Change program and we spend a few days focusing on the significant people issues we are encountering in our work. I just got back from this year's meeting in Paris where I came away with a few high impact thoughts. One that was very significant for me was communicated by Denis Bourgeois, a professor at HEC.

In a simple XY graph, Denis created a visual description of the cultural choices that organizations and people make.
From an organizational standpoint, the most compelling way to think about this graph is to first evaluate the Y axis and determine the degree to which employees would say the organization is transparent in both its business and people strategies. Questions to ask to determine this could include:

• Can employees articulate why the organization exists and how it makes money?
• Do employees know what the growth plans for the organization are?
• Can employees explain how their work matters and would they say the organization values that?

The last question segues to the X axis where the degree to which employees are either respected or manipulated is measured. While both the X and the Y are mainly subjective measurements, I think this axis is the tougher one to determine... All organizations would say they respect employees - and I think they'd mean it. But does the culture of the company really support individual respect? A few questions to tease this out...

• Do all employees have an opportunity to do meaningful work? How do they know it's meaningful?
• Does any employee with an idea have a ready audience to be heard?
• Are individual strengths and weaknesses accounted for within the context of acceptable performance?

Your Recognition and Reward System is a tool to support whatever your organization determines is the correct quadrant to live in (I hope for your sake it's the upper left!). The behaviors and performance you recognize and the way you recognize those are indicators of where you want to be.

On June 14th, indispensible people across the country are meeting for a completely non-commercial chance to talk, connect and inspire one another.

You really ought to look in to this.

These Meetups were started by Seth Godin, a freakishly prolific thinker who has played a major part in shaping the way I look at my work. When it comes to my relationship with business and productivity, Seth is indispensible. He's a linchpin.

Which is the focus of his latest book.

A linchpin, as Seth describes it, is somebody in an organization who is indispensable, who cannot be replaced-her role is just far too unique and valuable. And then he goes on to say, well, seriously folks, you need to be one of these people, you really do. To not be one is economic and career suicide.

- Hugh MacLeod

These Meetups give like-minded people a chance to find one another, so wherever you are, consider joining a Meetup or lead your own if there isn't one nearby.

If you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we'll be at the Grapevine meeting at Fireside Pies at 8pm and we'd love to see you there.

Related and Interesting:

• Seth's Blog
• ReWork
• ZapposInsights
• Making Ideas Happen
• TED: Ideas worth spreading

Given that the physiology of our brain pushes back against new activity and change – how do we make progress when new ideas, methods or behaviors need to occur? 

Interesting finding number three…  The key to changing behaviors is Attention Density.  If we create enough focus around new ideas, we make connections.  Coupling a stimulating environment with structured activity leads to more nervous system connections being formed and generally higher levels of function. 

The highest and best use of your organizations RRS is to help create a stimulating environment that recognizes and rewards the behaviors that are valued within the organization.  In the next post, I’ll outline an ideal RRS and how the components compliment the need for our brains to process change.

By the way…  I realize that these “brain posts” have placed RRS in the context of a change management tool.  An RRS functions in other capacities as well, but my point has been to single out the physiological limitations our brains place on us when we encounter change; so I haven’t veered from that course relative to RRS.

In the USA, we drive on the right side of the road.  I’ve been doing that successfully for a few decades now and like to think that I’m a good driver.  On my trips to England, I’ve imagined what it must be like to drive on the “wrong side” of the road – and I imagine it would be a disaster. Maybe if I was in a tank, or at least a Hummer, I’d survive?  Other cars or pedestrians in the area might not be so lucky.

Even if I was in my own car, I’d be completely disoriented simply because I’d be forced to drive on the other side of the road.  Cognitively, I can understand what I’m supposed to do – but the physiology of my brain would prevent this from being a comfortable experience for me.  To be successful driving in England, I’d have to “unlearn” my ingrained understanding of what driving is about.

Interesting finding number two:

Because the brain better supports the repetition of an already learned behavior or action, individuals must go through a process where a new or different behavior is absorbed over a period of time that allows for cognitive acceptance as well as behavioral adaptation.

For our purposes, the implications for RRS continue to point toward an understanding that time, communication, training and leadership are components that must be factored in to the creation and operation of enterprise wide RRS.

How often have you wondered, “Why can’t that person just change”?

I mean, if someone really wants to, can’t they just immediately begin to act/think/speak differently?  New research indicates it’s not so easy. Technological breakthroughs have enabled scientists to gain greater insight into how the brain works – for our purposes the most relevant data has to do with how the brain responds to change. Recognition and Reward Systems largely exist to serve as change agents that reinforce right behaviors.  With that in mind, the new research provides some insight that can help create high performing RRS.

The work that I think is most relevant has been done by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz.  Over the next few days, I’m going to communicate some of their findings and add my thoughts on why that information matters to anyone involved in people strategy and/or the creation and operation of RRS. 

So, interesting finding number one:

At the level of individual neurons, brains are built to detect changes in the environment and send out strong signals to alert us to anything unusual – which pushes us to act more emotionally and more impulsively.

Now, given that all of us are built slightly different and will respond in slightly different ways, we all are hard wired to react to a change in our environment – and for most of us, that hard wired response feels like a voice screaming “NO!” inside our heads.

If a RRS exists to communicate and support right behaviors, what must it include to allow for a significant portion of the audience that feels immediately threatened when confronted with a situation that asks for a change in behaviors?  I’ll share my insight in full at the end of the series, but my answer to this question involves time, communication, training and leadership.  

I get that there’s an industry that has used the term “service recognition” for a long time and that habits are hard to break…  But words mean things and I think it’s time to give a long overdue retirement party for this out of date moniker.  Service Recognition was birthed a looooong time ago during an era when womb-to-tomb employment with one organization was highly desirable.  Business culture has changed – there’s nothing wrong with working for the same company for a long time – it’s just valued differently now. 

The problem I have is that too many companies are still recognizing their employees for not dying and not getting fired… which is the primary message sent when the bulk of an employee’s corporate recognition experience is focused on “service recognition”.

Time is an important component to the human experience and we mark it in many ways and at countless occasions during our walk through life – it’s smart to acknowledge the time a person spends with an organization – but it is done best when employee tenure is simply one component of a multi-faceted recognition and reward system that regularly captures other recognition moments. 

So, help me change some thinking and let’s use a different phrase – I’d suggest something unique to your organization (A car rental company uses the term, “Mile Markers”) or if you need something generic, how about “tenure recognition”?  Perhaps with a change in language, we’ll start thinking differently about the application.

There's a new site called Unvarnished that is sure to ruffle feathers once it gets out of beta.

From the site: 

What is Unvarnished?

Unvarnished is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews.

Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more.

The first sentence is a sterile "sure whatever" description. The second one, now there's the rub. We've been reviewing products on Amazon, movies on Netflix and restaurants on Yelp for years. But reviewing people as if they're a video game? Seems a little odd at first.

Unvarnished is a review site for people.

When I tell you that Unvarnished allows users to submit reviews anonymously, I'm willing to bet your first reaction is to wince. That was my reaction as well, but I've had some time to think about it and I have to say that I've come around.

At least I think I have. 

I heard about Unvarnished just a week or so after reading "You've Been Yelped" in Inc. Magazine's February issue. The article is about Yelp, it's frightening ability to make or break a business, and owners' differing approaches to dealing with that reality.

For example, one salon owner offers exclusive deals on her Yelp page to attract new customers. If a new client schedules an appointment and mentions the site, she makes sure to cut their hair personally. Then there's the owner who tracked down a negative reviewer and ended up getting booked for battery. Not surprisingly, she describes the site as "evil".

Love it or Leave it?

While I was reading the article, it seemed clear to me that being angry that the thing exists in the first place and dismissing negative reviews outright instead of using the feedback to improve your offering was just pointless. Obviously, the best strategy is to engage with the site's users and proactively leverage the community to grow your business because it's not going to just go away.

But. Easy for me to say. My name's not on the door or the lease. I'm not the guy struggling to keep the lights to my pizza joint on.

Little did I know that a group of geeks in Silicon Valley were working on something that'll give me a chance to put my money where my mouth is. And, it may very well force the rest of you to do the same, whether you want to or not.

Make It Work

That's not just good advice from Tim Gunn on how to wow Michael Kors, it's going to have to be our default position if Unvarnished takes off.

Inc.'s advice to handling online criticism is to Register, Breathe and Be Gracious. Good advice for owners and applicable for individuals.

If the site takes the idea of "personal branding" to an entirely new level, I'll be looking to the practices of businesses who have grown thanks to Yelp, not commiserating with those who despise it.

At least I hope so.

2 + 2 = 4. Always. 

But there are plenty of things that call for a nuanced decision making process and non-linear thinking. Oftentimes, there are multiple ways to address a given issue and many of them are “correct”. Paying taxes and picking paint colors for example, and I’d add designing & operating Reward and Recognition Systems (RRS) to the list.

I do my level best to pay the IRS exactly what I owe.  I keep diligent records and use a very good CPA, and yet, I’m not 100% positive the final number is correct. There are just so many options and so many gray areas regarding the specifics.  Common sense says it’s simple – you just follow the rules and punch the correct buttons on the calculator – but we’ve all heard the stories about tax pros looking at the same return with wildly different conclusions.

We are doing some decorating around our house. Ok, my wife is doing some decorating around the house, and she came home with five color swatches for a paint color she’s considering for the legs of a table.  All five swatches are black.  Yep – five different shades of “black”.  Which one is correct (I picked the one she liked, but THAT lessons got nothing to do with this post)?  There seem to be multiple shades of a color that I thought was pretty simple to describe.

So maybe you’re redecorating your people strategy or trying to figure out what rules to follow to create your RRS.  In my experience, there are a few “2 + 2” facts to keep in mind: 

• Know what result you’re trying to achieve.  These can be strategic (become the best employer in our region) or tactical (increase sales by 15%).
• Follow a process.  At The Miller Company, we use Recognition Professionals International’s Seven Best Practice Standards (www.recognition.org)
• Involve senior management.  Help them understand how the RRS will drive corporate goals and tell them what they can do to help the effort.

Building an RRS involves a little science and a little art. Get the science right, then enjoy the creative process of choosing the “colors” that work best for your organization.