2010 June Archive - RecognizeThis! Blog

Archive for June, 2010

Culture & Change * It’s ALWAYS about the People

We all face change in the workplace. Whether it’s a major change (merger or acquisition) or a more minor change (to shift schedules, team make up, reporting lines), the impact can be the polar opposite of what was desired when the change was instituted. So what’s the best way to manage that change?

I believe it’s through your company culture. As this IndustryWeek article notes:

“Culture is all about people. Importantly, research has shown that it’s the people component that makes mergers work … or fail dismally! Make no mistake: culture counts, but not only In M&A deals, joint ventures, and outsourcing partnerships. Culture management is also critical to maximize the everyday output of work teams and to minimize productivity-killing conflict that’s so prevalent in many companies’ day-to-day operations.”

Okay, that’s pretty straightforward. I think most of us can agree on that. But what kind of culture is most supportive of change, which seems to be coming ever faster in today’s world – new competitors, new customer wants, new employee needs/demands, new economic challenges? This Strategy+Business article argues for a systems approach:

“The speed and complexity of the global business environment calls for a new appreciation of a systems-focused view of the world… The intellectual roots of systems understanding are very diverse, but they converge around three interrelated assumptions.
1) Because many of today’s organizations are complex and ever-changing, static solutions that try to lock in any ongoing management solution are likely to become new sources of destabilization themselves. …
2) Organizations must have a capacity for widespread experimentation and trial-and-error learning if they are to be self-correcting.
3) Although a systems view requires an understanding of how all the parts fit together as a whole, it also depends on an intimate understanding of the parts themselves. This is because change in any part of the system or in its outside environment — including the other systems to which it is connected — can produce profound ripple effects.”

That’s great on a theoretical level, but HOW do you do this? How do you successfully execute change with highly willful, often stubborn, and usually less informed people – the employees upon whom you rely for the change to be successful? Steve Roesler relates one successful approach:

“After calling the group of 9 people [affected by the change] together and announcing the upcoming work changes, I made this statement: ‘The changes themselves aren’t negotiable (I explained why). However, you can decide how best to organize and execute them. You are considered the experts when it comes to this function. Before we do anything, I want to have a discussion about your initial reaction. What do you see as immediately positive and why, what’s lousy and why, and how will this impact your life.’ …

“They had to be allowed to have real conversations, regardless of the feelings involved. The process isn’t linear, clean, or filled with smiley faces because it involves telling, and listening to, the truth.

“Outcome: The company saw its intent and meaning for this project realized; the team members did the same. The overall result created a new meaning in the depth of relationship between the corporate entity and the people involved.”

And that’s the rub. If you do not involve your people – not just communicate at them, but rather have an ongoing conversation with them – I can almost guarantee your change initiative will fall. Prepare for inevitable change now. Start fostering a culture centered on your people.

What’s your culture like today? Can it handle change?

We're Blogging Everywhere * Read Us in HBR & Compensation Cafe

Last week was a great week for Globoforce in the HR Blogosphere.

Eric Mosley, Globoforce’s CEO, blogged for Harvard Business Review on why bonuses don’t work. In “You’re Getting a Bonus! So Why Aren’t You Motivated?”, Eric explains the downside of bonuses and offers an alternative solution that better delivers the desired improvements in productivity and strategic alignment.

Then read up on how that could work in practice in my post on Compensation Cafe: Appreciating the Runners as Well as the Winners. I tell the story of Tom, an avid if unskilled athlete, who was nevertheless voted team captain for his consistent demonstration of leadership, encouragement and wisdom among his teammates.

Click through to see how this relates to employee recognition.

Putting Strategic Objectives to Work

In an article on the importance of morale and engagement, what intrigued me most was a statement on execution that applies to far more than just efforts to improve morale or increase engagement:

“It’s not your plans that are important; it’s whether you can implement them. A good strategy is a fine thing, but it is useless unless you can make it happen. Making it happen depends to a large degree on your people, and therein lies the power of morale.” (emphasis original)

This is the inextricability of strategy from execution. You cannot consider one without the other.

A highlight in HR Magazine outlined the characteristics of good strategic objectives. Two thirds of clarifying questions offered dealt with action – what are you doing or what will be done by others to make the objectives a reality. For example:

“Do employees throughout the company understand how these objectives affect them and how they contribute independently and collectively to the defined objectives?”

It doesn’t matter if you spend mere hours or long weeks crafting strategic objectives that you believe will lead your organization to the top of your industry if you do not consider how you will communicate those objectives to your employees. Even more important is helping employees understand, through the work, how their efforts and behaviors contribute to achieving those objectives.

The most positive and reinforcing way to do that is through strategic recognition that intentionally acknowledges and praises those efforts that reflect your company values in contribution to achieving your objectives. This makes your objectives real and meaningful for every employee.

What are you doing to make your objectives come alive, from the shop floor to the executive suite?

Results Last Philosophy for Greatest Success

What’s your philosophy of leadership? Hands off? Micro-management? Numbers-based (just deliver the results)? People-based (keep employees happy)? Some combination of the above?

When asked that question in a recent New York Times “Corner Office” column, the CEO and chairman of Saks, Stephen Sadove, had this to say:

“I have a very simple model to run a company. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.

“When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. They’re focused on the bottom line. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet, it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results. So it’s a flip.

“What I try to teach people is, don’t ask the first question in terms of numbers. Let’s talk about the people, let’s talk about the culture, let’s talk about the ideas and the innovation.”

I greatly appreciate Mr. Sadove’s philosophy, summarized as:

Leadership –> Culture –> Strategic Objectives –> People –> Results

When you focus first on your leadership, what kind of culture they are passively allowing or actively encouraging to develop, the strategic objectives you’ve identified for your organization, the people executing on those objectives within that culture, THEN you will get the results you need – and perhaps more. But if you focus first and most intently on the results, as Wall Street tends to, you may achieve a short-term objective but lose any sustainability to continue those trends in the long-term.

I wrote a couple of years ago about a finding from the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement 85% of a company’s assets are in “intangibles.” If, as is standard, Wall Street firms are valuing companies based only on tangibles, then much of the picture is being ignored.

What’s your philosophy?

Join Me at SHRM * 2 Sessions on CEO Role & Measuring Recognition

Join me at SHRM’s 2010 Annual Conference and Exposition in San Diego, June 27-30, 2010. I’ll be leading two sessions:

In “The CEO’s New Role in Recognition,” Monday, 28 June, from 4:00-5:15, I will demonstrate to HR leaders how strategic employee recognition — when championed by the CEO — can transform a company’s culture, ignite motivation, and positively impact an organization’s workforce and business performance.

I will also discuss:

* Why today’s employee recognition programs require the support and attention of CEOs to be truly strategic and effective.
* How to generate executive support for employee recognition programs by demonstrating the short and long-term impact on employee and business performance.
* What actionable steps every HR leader should take today to foster a culture of appreciation across their company.

In Wednesday’s Mega Session, “Measuring Recognition for Maximum Business Success,” 30 June, from 10:00-11:15 a.m., I’ll share best practices for measuring recognition for maximum business success. This session will help HR leaders build a business case for strategic recognition by demonstrating how the program can be measured against corporate goals.

I will also discuss:

* Why employee recognition is on the path to become the must-have HR program of the 21st century due to its measurable impact on key employee and business metrics.
* How forward-thinking HR leaders are applying best practices to measure recognition by reaching the vast majority of their workforce with awards tied to core values and strategic objectives.
* What new technologies and trends are elevating employee recognition and how HR leaders can leverage them to make a quantifiable impact on employee engagement.

If you’re at SHRM, please do introduce yourself. I look forward to meeting you.

Corporate Culture * Myth or Reality?

A Bnet post titled “Why ‘Corporate Culture’ Is a Myth” caught my attention. The author makes imprecise distinctions between “culture” and “values”:

“The values of a group might be honorable — or not. Unlike the mushier name culture, with its connotation of a cozy melting pot or a delightfully harmonious salad bowl, values includes more than what is outwardly professed, endlessly parroted and tritely canonized on T-shirts and coffee mugs. It also encompasses what is implicit, often deliberately buried and denied. People may talk your ear off about their culture, but values can be seen in real-time … as evidenced by real actions.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen plenty of company values “endlessly parroted and tritely canonized” on wall plaques, coffee mugs, ID badges and wallet cards. These lists had no more impact on employee behaviors and actions than the “culture” the Bnet author is so quick to deride.

The missing, but critical, point to understand is that values and culture are inextricably intertwined. The problem arises when a company has its STATED values (on a plaque on the wall, coffee mugs, ID badges) that are entirely different from the demonstrated and TOLERATED values. Regardless of the STATED values, it’s the TOLERATED values around which the culture is formed.

Think of it this way — ENRON had several stated vales, included integrity. But they sure didn’t demonstrate integrity in their work. The company culture was very much one that encouraged deceit and profit at all costs.

So how do you merge your STATED values come alive to contribute to and create the company culture you want? The most effective way is also the most positive — through strategic recognition. This is “after the fact” recognition that catches employees behaving in the right way, and then specifically calls them out for it. In a formal recognition program, we strongly recommend using your company values as the reasons for recognition and then allow anyone in the organization to formally recognize anyone else. What would this look like?

“John, thank you for the INTEGRITY you demonstrated when dealing with customer X. It was a difficult situation for reasons ABC, but you consistently held to our standards as a company while still responding to X’s needs in the most appropriate way as well. Well done.”

If you allow anyone to notice and appreciate behaviors of colleagues that reflect your values, and you encourage such recognition frequently, employees begin to understand how to live out the values in their daily work — taking the values off the wall and making them real. This then creates the culture you wanted — one built on recognition.

Precarious Culture * Achieving the Proper “Balance” with Recognition

Have you ever heard the aphorism to truly understand something you have to look at it another way? Well, sometimes you have to turn it upside down.

Paul Hebert, a blogger I always learn from and author of the i2i blog, recently posted an interesting perspective on corporate culture. In discussing corporate culture, Paul presents the usual pyramid of a broad employee base on the bottom, a smaller layer of middle management, and the smallest group – senior executives – at the point on top. The problem with this view, Paul argues, is the appearance that senior execs are less important to driving company culture.

To fix the perspective, Paul turns the entire pyramid upside down, with the broad base of employees at the top, middle managers in between, and the small point of senior execs on the bottom. Paul’s point:

When I see this image I think – wow – that thing could tip over at any time if the bottom level (now the senior managers) ever crumbled or if it moved in any direction. The entire culture is now supported by a fine point at the top (now the bottom) of the pyramid.

From my point of view this communicates much better how important the senior levels are with respect to defining and driving culture in an organization. Flipping the pyramid truly highlights the precariousness of culture in an organization.

It won’t take much to tip that inverted pyramid over. And we’ve seen it happen time and time again. One or two bad apples can really affect the organizations culture.

This is a wise observation from Paul. While it’s true that a company’s culture is more of an ethos than a malleable “thing” that can be influenced by anyone, it’s also true that the senior executives wield much greater power in their ability to change a company culture – for the better or for the worse.

I’ve commented before on targeted examples of culture destruction at Home Depot and Delta Airlines that happened in a relatively short period of time and were the direct result of the actions and attitudes of new chief executives. On the positive side is the classic example of Tony Hsieh at Zappos and his commitment as CEO to only hire those employees who not only fit within the culture but will actively live and promote the values and behaviors that create the culture.

This is why it’s critical for the CEO to actively desire and promote strategic recognition as a powerful mechanism for promoting desired values and behaviors through the work of all employees. With such influence and direction, the CEO can make the foundation of the culture much more stable and less likely to crumble.

Learning from Xerox: Changing Culture to Make a Positive Even Better

Ursula Burns has been much in the news lately, it seems. One article on her that particularly caught my eye appeared in Fortune magazine a couple of months ago. The article opened with this:

“Being bold has never been a challenge for Burns, 52, a mechanical engineer who got noticed at Xerox (XRX, Fortune 500) because she often spoke up bluntly in a famously — and overly — genteel culture. She becomes the first African-American woman to run a Fortune 500 company and succeeds Mulcahy as chairman in May.”

She got noticed for speaking bluntly in a genteel culture. Yet that’s something she wants to change in the Xerox culture under her tenure. Later in the article, Burns says:

“Some of those things can become a hindrance, especially when you need to move quickly, which is just about every day. This niceness sometimes leads to lack of motion, lack of decision. We have great operators in our company all around the globe, and we haven’t quite given them comfort in operating independently. They can do it. So I want them to actually start doing it. Walk in here and use your brain, take chances. Not being reckless. But they know what to do. They don’t have to call me to do it.”

So how do you do that? How help them get comfortable in operating independently when you know this is something they can do? You can’t just tell them to “operate independently.” You have to directly, consistently and frequently recognize and reward employees when they do just that. Call them out specifically – “Jane, thank you for operating independently when you made the decision to do XYZ. You clearly understood our challenges in Project X and took the necessary steps to alleviate those challenges and please the customer extraordinarily. Well done.”

But this isn’t something that Burns or anyone on her team should have to figure out how to do operationally. Just as she explains Xerox takes that burden of detail off of their clients:

“What we do is manage document-intensive business processes for our clients around the world so that they can focus on what they really do.

“We do that by applying technology. We do it in a global way, so that if you have locations around the world and you want to communicate with your people in a fairly consistent way, I can do that for you. It will look the same, feel the same, be delivered in the same time and the same format. All the information you want present will be there; anything you want redacted will be gone. You shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

Globoforce does the same. Too many companies spend too many hours and too much budget trying to manage disparate recognition programs, some home grown, some outsourced, all around the world. Similar to Xerox, we manage recognition business process for our clients around the world so they can focus on the business. We do this by applying strategic recognition technology and solutions to make recognition fun and easy. We are the only truly global provider to make sure all employees can participate equally and experience the same opportunity for recognition. We give everyone the same access to uniquely personal, culturally appropriate and meaningful rewards. Our clients don’t worry about this. We make it happen for them.

Globoforce Joins Compensation Cafe Bloggers: Debut Post on Employee Economic Reality

What’s your personal “blog roll?” What sites fill up your reader or do you find yourself regularly visiting throughout the week to keep you finger on the pulse of your industry?

My blog roll is quite long. Just a few I follow are listed in the footer of this blog. But one I’ve found to offer consistently valuable insight on the varied aspects of compensation is Compensation Café. A round-up of industry experts from around the world, the Café prides itself on “serving up straight talk, original thinking and caffeinated discussion on everything compensation.”

I’m pleased and honored to have been recently added as a regular contributor to Compensation Café. My debut post appeared today, in which I discuss the bi-polar nature of the economic news in the last month and the impact that’s having on your employees. As I note in the post:

“Company leaders cannot predict when we will pull out of the recession sufficiently for employees to decide to jump ship. We do know, however, that half of employees are disaffected in the workplace and even those who are engaged (high-potentials) will leave for a more fulfilling or appreciative work environment as soon as they are able.”

Hop over to the Café to read the news and research backing up this conclusion or to check out the insights from the blogging team. A few of my recent favorites:

From Margaret O’Hanlon on Performance Management: Pop Quiz: Can You Use “Mid-Year Review” & “Business Investment” in the Same Sentence?

“Instead of using your performance appraisal process as the context for mid-year reviews, dig deep into the business issues your company is facing with products, services, customers, technology. Check out how your stock has trended and learn why. Work with leadership to build an accurate, insightful business case that will educate managers and employees.”

From Laura Schroeder on Engagement: Strings Attached

“At the end of the day, it’s a complex mix of factors that keep people in a job or lead them to move on so I think we need a better word than engagement. My suggestion is connection because people who feel personally and professionally connected to a company, to a manager, to a group of colleagues, or to a particular job, are more likely to give more of themselves and less likely to go elsewhere.”

From Chuck Csizmar on Global Recognition & Reward: The Risk of Global Standardization

“You might think that the positive aspects of employee recognition programs are a universally accepted principle, but that’s only partially correct. Important difference exist when something can be viewed from multiple perspectives. In some cultures / national identities the role of the team is such a core element of employee identification that seeking out an individual contributor for recognition is not an accepted practice. Some employees might be reluctant to step forward, or be pushed into the spotlight.”

Pour a cup of coffee and settle in for some good discussion at the Compensation Café. I hope you enjoy the conversation and learn as much as I do.

Employer Brand * Likely More Misunderstood than You Think

Here’s a startling statistic I ran across recently:

“70% of senior leadership understand and 49% value the employer brand, compared with 10% and 20% of employees/potential employees, respectively.”

That’s from a CIPD/Mercer report published a couple of months ago. Consider your own organization – your leadership gets “it”, but your employees, the people who execute “it” don’t. And don’t assume your “employer brand” isn’t important. This is another way of identifying your company culture, the ethos that others see you as that is largely beyond your control.

Steve Jobs and the Apple brand do this exceptionally well. Not only do his leadership and employees get “it,” but so do consumers.

Three key tips from the research on how to increase understanding among your employees/potential employees of your employer brand – and, critically, align that understanding with what senior leadership intended.

Align Employer Brand with Reward

“Branding and rewards should be mutually supportive, emphasizing the need to get the initial alignment correct and ensuring authenticity within the organization. Aligning employer brand with reward can help companies meet employee expectations, from attracting them into the company to developing trust and commitment during their careers.”

While this report focuses largely on external brand and the total rewards package, it also links employee value proposition to rewards strategy, a desire we’re seeing more if in many of the more ambitious, direct consumer-facing companies we work with.

Use Company Values as Strategic Link
This report strongly supports using the company’s values as a common link in the company culture and the basis of reward – one of Globoforce’s 5 tenets of strategic recognition.

“The most effective way rewards can support employer branding is through rewarding desired behaviors. Often defined in a company’s values, these behaviors can create a clear identify for employees and support a positive customer experience that together reinforces the company culture.”

Just as the report strongly advocates using company values and recognition based on them as a means of performance management, so too does Globoforce strongly recommend using strategic recognition as a faster, easier and more cost effective means of performance management in an organization – a 360° ongoing performance review based on what companies most need to succeed, which is consistent demonstration of the company values.

Getting this right will ensure that new and existing employees are strongly linked with the company ethos and remain more loyal over the long-term, drastically reducing retention and replacement budgets.

Lead from the Top
Agreeing with and working to achieve the above is great in principle, but to truly succeed, you need the CEO to not just buy-in and promote the program, but to preside over it as one of his/her projects seen as critical to company success:

“Often the most successful strategies are those that are presided over by a CEO who is visible and active in the process.”

Employer brand is near and dear to every CEO’s heart. What are you doing to show him how you can proactively contribute to the understanding of this brand at every employee level – and measure and report on the results?

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Archive for June, 2010