Inspiration Conversation

Here’s a link to an interesting discussion between two very strong thinkers in the incentive and recognition space.  I follow both Rick and Paul and I learn a lot from what they have to say.  Both make strong arguments regarding the issue of gift cards within a recognition and reward system (RRS).  As I read the post and the comments, I found myself struggling to make a choice on who I thought was “right” and finally determined… both.

http://ideationz.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/turning-retail-gift-cards-into-a-global-farce/

I get that there have to be decisions made around what mechanism is used to fulfill the ultimate promise of a reward within an organization’s RRS and it’s healthy to listen to articulate people dissect the pros and cons of respective ways to do that. I also think that it’s healthy to realize that it’s not really about the reward mechanism – there are several valid ways (none “perfect”) to get that done.  What really matters is making sure that an organization’s RRS is designed to suit their unique issues – I’m confident Rick and Paul would agree.  

I’m agnostic on the issue of what’s “best”…  I think best is a function of lots of things and is defined singularly by the particular situation being addressed at the time.  I’m suspicious of people or companies that say their solution is always “the best”.

Much of our society has determined that well-being is largely a function of economic prosperity. At its roots, this is true - food on the table, a roof over our head and clothes on our back are essentials for survival and health, but how many of us really struggle with these necessities? As we move up the economic ladder toward the over-stated examples in the first paragraph, our perceived ability to enjoy our lives becomes more closely tied to the creation of wealth beyond the effort to supply basic needs. We're collectively trapped in this paradigm and I think it hurts our society and it hurts us personally.

My opinion is we've all been spoiled by the last couple of decades where a great deal of wealth (or the appearance of wealth?) was created and that has skewed our perception of reality. I'm going to stop the economic ranting there as my point is not to analyze the group angst over our pocketbooks. My point is to ask the question, is there such a thing as normal?

I'd argue the "No" side - "normal" is something we all kind of want because it implies safety - but change has always been part of the human experience and we happen to be in the center of an amazing amount of change. So what to do when you're pretty certain that tomorrow will hold a different set of challenges for you than you face today? Here's my take:

• Run to it. You can't avoid it - so sprint to it and figure it out before someone else does.

• Know who you are and what resources you'll need to find to address the opportunities you'll encounter.

• Be a whole person. Have relationships that are meaningful to you. Have a hobby you day dream about. Be excellent at your work. Figure out what you need to live a passionate life and aggressively pursue that life.

• Hang around good people that do cool stuff. Contribute so they would say you're a good person and you're doing cool stuff. 

• Forget about the way you did it yesterday. Think about the best way to do it today.

I recently encountered a formula for the stages of life a team goes through. The team can be small, or the team can be an entire organization - the dynamic is the same regardless of the numbers.

The stages are as follows:

Forming - start-up phase characterized by high energy, creation of vision and goals

Storming - the "honeymoon" is over, and goals and cohesiveness must be reestablished

Norming - fine tuning stage as tasks are being completed

Performing - tasks are completed, and competence is established

Transforming - accomplishments are celebrated, and future direction is established

As I thought about it and worked through the implications, it became plain to me that these stages also apply to projects that occur in a work setting, including a work product many of you are familiar with - a recognition and rewards system. In your role as the leader - either of a team or a recognition system - which of the stages are most critical and need the greatest amount of attention? The stage that we all work toward is certainly "Performing" - it's where the payoff for all the hard work comes. In this stage all is well, everyone knows what's going on and problems are minimal. The Performing stage is important to a leader as the validation of the vision established earlier and the resources applied to achieve that vision; but it's dangerous for a leader to "camp" in this stage or in the preceding "Norming" stage (which is really just a warm-up for the Performing stage).

In your leadership role, you should be spending most of your time creating vision and energy (Forming); maintaining a steady hand through difficulties when others want to take an easy, but incorrect path (Storming); and evaluating your current situation to look for opportunities for improvement and to ensure you are preparing for future conditions that may be different than present circumstances (Transforming).

In my work, I frequently encounter companies where recognition and rewards systems are old, stale, and ineffective. Significant money is being spent and wasted because leadership hit "Performing" at some point in the past and just stayed there, either ignoring or not realizing that, at some point, circumstances and environment changed such that the system was no longer working. All of us "own" our work product and must provide some measure of leadership to create an environment where continuous improvement is practiced and appreciated. It can be hard, because you're purposefully leaving a comfort zone, but it's critical if you want to enjoy long-term success.

Regards,
Tom

Last week, Kathy sent me this article from Branding Strategy Insider, "The Danger of You Centered Branding". The author makes some strong points and calls out some brands who have:

"... repositioned themselves around being whatever you want them to be. Vodafone is spending millions declaring 'Power to you'. Yahoo! is proclaiming: 'There is a new master of the digital universe. You'.

"Meanwhile, T-Mobile is launching its myTouch smart-phone by asking consumers to imagine a 'one-of-a-kind phone for your one-of-a-kind life'.

"'We are about you,' say these brands. 'Whatever you want, that's what we are.' It's very 'co-creative', 'empowering' and all the other things 22-year-old marketers crap on about."

Alrighty then. Tell us what you really think.

"Unfortunately, it's not going to work, because when you don't stand for anything, you get eaten alive by competitors who do.

"It also won't work because, in my opinion, it bores consumers. ... When Time magazine tried the empowerment approach in 2006 and declared that its 'Person of the Year' was You - complete with a reflective cover - it sold poorly compared with editions from earlier years with specific people."

Could be.

It's tough to take a shot at Time magazine for correctly acknowledging that consumer generated content is going to be what Joe Biden might call, "a big deal worth taking note of." Sure, maybe the magazine didn't sell well, but four years later it's hard to say they were wrong.

"You are extremely important" is a marketing message that does very, very well. But, he is on to something. 

37 Signals (the company behind Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, etc.) famously tell their customers "No" all the time. As software programmers, they consider themselves curators. They're not going to add a feature/painting to the program/museum just because the public demands it.

This ethos works at 37 Signals and they have carved out a niche for themselves that their competitors can't touch. (Next time you'd rather watch an interesting biz lecture instead of television, watch this and to a lesser degree this.)

But, in my opinion, concluding that consumers are bored by brands that are focused on them is an overstatement. Are some? Sure. And they're the type that love 37 Signals.

But are the vast majority of consumers used to being able to customize, personalize and bejewelify products to their overly pandered-to ego's content? Yup, and they're the masters of their digital universe.

He does make a great point, that brands risk losing their identity if the only thing they really stand for is being whatever "you" want it to be.

"Saying you will be whatever the consumer wants is very different from knowing what they want and delivering it."

Amen to that, and I would add it means knowing what they want and deciding whether to say Yes or No.

One of the many valuable things Twitter offers is a chance to follow some pretty sharp folks and take in nuggets of wisdom and insight on a daily basis.

What follows is our list of some influential Employee Recognition & Incentives thinkers worth following on Twitter. It's by no means exhaustive, just enough to get you started.

And hey, if we missed one of your favorites, let us know in the comments section or send a tweet to @TheMillerCo.

1. @davidzinger - Founder of the Employee Engagement Network on Ning, David shares useful links to articles relating to Employee Engagement.

2. @incentintel - Aligning audience behavior with company goals through incentives, psychology and behavioral economics.

3. @hinda_incentive - Our friends at Hinda share quality original content and great references to other recognition / incentives / employee engagement posts.

4. @ROIofEngagement - Building the Business Case for Engagement. Resources to credibly measure ROI of incentives, meetings, events, rewards, recognition & loyalty programs.

5. @EEA_Org - The Enterprise Engagement Alliance is another excellent resource for engagement-related articles and ideas. 

6. @michaelstallard : Founder of E Pluribus Partners and speaker on leadership and employee engagement. Excellent original blog content.

7. @roysaunderson : Founder of the Recognition Management Institute.

8. @DanielPink : The author of "Drive", an interesting (if incomplete) book on the science of motivation. We may not agree with everything he says, but he's serious about engagement, so we'll tip our hat.

9. @TheMillerCo : But you already knew that, right?

The first car I ever bought was a forest green '96 Toyota Corolla with about 32,000 miles on it. I drove it for another 130,000 miles during which time I had to:

• Replace a seat belt for $80
• Replace the alternator for $200

More people are talking about Toyota than any other brand these days. And they're talking about the recalls, but also the fixes being provided by the dealerships too. And some of the consumers are probably coming to the defense of the brand too. Maybe there is some truth to the adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity after all.

There's truth to the adage especially if you have a brand that your consumers are willing to defend. Companies have been able to deflect a certain threshold of negative press through sophisticated public relations campaigns for a while now. But, in an age where a brand's identity isn't defined by the company, but by increasingly-connected consumers, having an army of satisfied customers is simply a must. Toyota's promise and reputation has always been reliability, and I'm betting there are enough "I drove it for 100,000 miles with no issues" stories to see this through.

As the saying goes, never discuss politics or religion in mixed company, you'll either get upstaged or be left cleaning a mess. Wait, that's the one about sharing a scene with kids and animals.

Either way, I promise this post has nothing to do with the policies of the sitting President; it has only to do with the Obama brand. The brand that for several reasons was regarded as the marketing story of 2008. So, leave your red, blue, purple or green policy preferences aside, and let's take a look at 3 reasons why the President might consider buying an iPad as a symbol of solidarity after its beleaguered launch.

1. Impossible Expectations

Short of being able to perform actual magic, I'm not sure what the iPad could have delivered that would not have left some Apple fans feeling disappointed. For months prior to the announcement, bloggers speculated about what wonders the Apple Tablet might deliver. Even as I write this, there's a stack of mail next to me and the TIME Magazine cover asks, "Will Apple's iPad Save The Media?" As in, the whole Media?! (The conclusion by the way is, uh ... well, it's actually quite compelling.)

Compelling arguments and predictions aside, a single product saving an entire industry is nearly as ludicrous as expecting one man to change decades and decades of entrenched culture within the Federal Government.

But, here is where I think the iPad and the Obama brand are both partly to blame for their own (possibly temporary) misfortunes. Yes, a good amount of the hype is a result of the fan base daring to dream, expecting something absolutely otherworldly and hoisting those dreams upon mere mortals.

But.

It's not as if they weren't asked to.

In Steve Jobs' own words, the iPad is a "truly magical and revolutionary product." Steve, the iPad is really, really cool. It really is and I would love to have one. I would. But, it's basically a giant iPod Touch that reads books.

As for President Obama, we'll all recall that "Change" was a central theme of the campaign. There are certainly some excellent examples of President Obama living up to the brand promises of the Obama campaign. But, when the bar is set incredibly high, by the fans and by the Chief Executives alike, some amount of under-delivery is inevitable.

But these are people who are serious about influencing the world around them, and brands that are serious about growth and influence want fans and lots of them. Not simply repeat customers who return to the product "just 'cause" (though nobody's complaining about that!), but truly enthusiastic advocates.

However, the flip side of having a fan base that will, on occasion, transition from simply being intensely loyal to hysterically rabid is that fairly unreasonable expectations become quite common.

2. Blind Opposition

I think it's a safe bet to say that if President Obama rescued a child drowning in the Potomac, there would be a talk radio host somewhere (and a couple thousand Facebook status updates) ranting about how he should have been in the Oval Office negotiating a jobs bill.

Likewise, if the iPad had managed to deliver actual magic, there'd be some people saying with a scoff, "Sure, but do we really need magic?"

What do you do with blind opponents? As viscerally satisfying as it would be to just completely ignore them, it literally pays to swallow your medicine and take steps to nullify their complaints. I think the $499 model of the iPad with built-in Wi-Fi and USB sync (meaning access to downloads without an AT&T contract) is Apple speaking reasonably to the people in the "middle of the aisle".

Blind opponents of Apple want something like a $189 model that doesn't have to go through iBooks or iTunes for content and can connect to any carrier's 3G network. Basically, they want something totally "other" than what Apple has set out to build. That's just not going to happen.

The similarities for the Obama brand are a bit more combustible, so rather than my bringing up specific policies that are examples of compromise and those that are examples of what I believe to be standing firm for what he and his team have set out to build, let's just pretend that we agree completely! So, think of a few examples of the President speaking reasonably to the middle and a few examples of his administration ignoring the blind opponents. Ok, got a few? ... Yes! I agree completely! Wow, how remarkable that we are on the exact same page with regard to those examples.

Ahem.

3. January 27th Was a Really Big Day

And finally, yes, while the Obama team rescheduled the State of the Union to avoid upsetting Losties, they did manage to schedule it on the same day that Apple would introduce the iPad to the world. Maybe they were hoping that the good vibes from Jobs would carry over in to a SotU focused on, um, jobs. Sorry, had to do it.

Regardless, January 27th was a very important date in iCal at both 1 Infinite Loop and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

An epic launch for the one and something of a relaunch for the other; in both cases, there was a lot riding on those two speeches. For those keeping score at home, Obama was interrupted by more standing ovations, while Jobs got a comfy chair. Advantage: Jobs.

As to the aftermath of their pitches, Apple cannot have been too thrilled that parodies of the product's name were trending topics on Twitter far longer than #iPad itself. The device's generally icy reception in the mainstream is pretty well documented, but Apple's advocates are already rising to its defense (HT @michaelewitt). Truly, it's hard to imagine that the letdown will last and it's easy to image that by the 3rd Generation, the iPad will be every bit the cultural touchstone that the iPod has come to be. Easy to imagine, but not inevitable. 

And while the President's remarks were not without some controversy, the relaunch seems to have had the positive affect of bumping his approval rating above 50% after a sour stretch.

So, while Apple will get to see how consumers vote with their dollars when the iPad is available in late March and the Obama team will wait for actual votes; both are hoping to cash in on the upside of brand enthusiasm.

I've offered 3 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Reward & Recognition System in the past; obviously, Twitter is one of them. The service is now so ubiquitous that my dad tweeted me yesterday to let me know that I don't tweet with my mom enough these days.

If employee recognition / internal communications land on your desk and you're wondering what Twitter's got to offer, here are 3 Tweets that get it right.

1. Years of Service Recognition: @Lochrane [ http://twitter.com/lochrane/status/7985989071 ]

Low-hanging fruit here and a simple way to let them see their name in lights. We're all for it, as long as this comes in addition to (not in place of) an in-person celebration of the employee's contributions to the company.

2. Employees Living the Company Values: @LuminantPower [ http://twitter.com/LuminantPower/status/6671805345 ]

It's important to celebrate the moments when employees embody company values on the clock, but it's all the more powerful when that happens outside of the workplace. Luminant places a high premium on Community and this a great representation of that value. Extra credit for including a twitpic.

3. Manager-to-Peer & Peer-to-Peer Recognition: @ddbrown / @datotel [ http://twitter.com/ddbrown/statuses/7912284392 ]

Here's a CEO taking an opportunity to congratulate employees by name. John, Stephanie and Melissa's managers & co-workers could just as easily do the same. Extra credit for linking to the company's blog post with more information about the awards.

Did we miss a good one? Leave a comment below, or speaking of Twitter, get in touch with us over there at @TheMillerCo.

Squeezed between India and China, Bhutan is a tiny mountain kingdom with a unique perspective on national culture.  In an effort to fight back against the growing burden of what Bhutan considers to be negative influences from pop culture, Bhutan's leaders have determined that establishing, promoting and measuring "Gross National Happiness (GNH)" would provide a solution that adulation of David Beckham and 50 Cent could not.  A person responsible for the establishment of this new policy noted, "How does a small country like Bhutan handle globalization?  We will survive by being distinct, by being different".

Happiness domains being observed include psychological well being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance.  These domains are analyzed and even placed in a formula to determine the final measurement of GNH.  Will it spit out an end result that is meaningful?

Who knows?  But I think it's cool that Bhutan is making the effort to be a place where people live with purpose and meaning.  Measuring Gross National Happiness won't make Beckham and 50 Cent go away, but it will create an environment where citizens of Bhutan can see the big picture regarding what makes them unique and why that's worth nurturing.  Effectively, Bhutan is creating a cultural growth and brand management campaign! 

I think companies can learn from what Bhutan is doing.  What's unique about your company?  What is it about your culture that everyone needs to know about...to practice...to be proud of...to sustain and grow?  The answer to questions like these will provide a road map toward greater levels of employee engagement and brand growth.

Getting a handle on the identity of your culture and your brand (and the synergy between the two) will enable you to more accurately target your Recognition and Reward System as well as your marketing efforts.

Regards,

Tom 

You know you're on to something when Scott Adams makes fun of it.  He has the ability to present truth in a way that makes me laugh and makes me think - and there's a lot to think about in these three frames!

As "management experts" in the Recognition and Reward Systems (RRS) space, how would we answer the boss if we heard the statement, "we need more employee engagement"?  To do our jobs well, I'd suggest we understand the following:

• An RRS will contribute to engagement only after basic job needs are met.  Get to know Maslow and think about what that theory says relative to your workplace.  
• Your RRS should be comprehensive - EVERYONE should have an opportunity to be recognized.
• The RRS should support corporate strategy and business goals and should be able to flex when the strategy and goals evolve.
• Because it supports strategy and goals, an RRS must be designed in a way that creates a seamless appearance relative to other corporate initiatives and communication.
• If you expect to understand how your RRS impacts employee engagement, you need to be able to measure outcomes.
• Yes! The boss can be happier - but they have to be involved with the RRS - believe in what it stands for, use it, promote it and celebrate the accomplishments it highlights.

So it's official ... "Employee Engagement" is now a part of official business lexicon and it's likely that it will become even more visible.  The question for those of us interested in addressing the issue is which character in the strip are we playing and how will we answer the "I want more employee engagement" question?

Seriously...