Posted by Tom Miller on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 11:14 AM
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.
Posted by Tom Miller on Wed, Apr 15, 2009 @ 09:26 AM
I ran this morning and was thinking through how some of the "tactical stuff" we do relates to the bigger picture "strategic stuff". When we work with employee incentive programs, employee recognition awards or even trade show giveaways (anathema for many "recognition companies", but if you support corporate brands it makes sense) we're always thinking about how the particular project relates to the brand and culture of the client. Very often, someone will want to do something that -- while it might be a fine stand-alone idea -- doesn't quite fit the culture of the company.
As I was rolling this through my head, my path turned through the woods near a creek, and for a mile or so, I had a great experience wandering where the path needed to go relative to the trees, the creek and the topography. It felt very natural because the terrain dictated where I had to run.
When I popped out of the woods, I found myself on a sidewalk next to a residential development. This particular development is about fifteen years old and must have been created by someone (or a committee) that had been told or had read somewhere that curvy sidewalks are better then straight ones.
The street was straight as an arrow and the walls of the development ran along with it perfectly parallel. But, the sidewalk between the two was a series of carefully engineered curves, all with the same radius and none curving around an obstacle -- just curving back and forth for the sake of it. It felt really odd to run on this slithering piece of concrete when the natural course should have simply been straight ahead.
If you know your company well, trust your instincts about what "feels" good relative to your culture. Find the natural terrain for your Recognition and Reward Systems and if it's not easy to see, do some exploring, venture down multiple paths ... the work will be worth the effort.