Winning with Recognition Book Archive - RecognizeThis! Blog

Archive for the "Winning with Recognition Book" Category

3 Reasons Company Culture Cannot Be Ignored

Recognize This! – Far more is on the line than “a nice place to work” when company culture isn’t given the attention it deserves.

Most of my readers know I’m Irish, though I usually write from a more global perspective or give my insights on news and issues that originate outside Ireland.

That said, when I saw an article by an old colleague appear in the Irish Times, I had to share this with you. Though he’d likely not remember me these many years later as I was just a new joiner at PA Consulting at the time, today Eddie Molloy and I certainly share the same outlook on the critical importance of a strong company culture. An excerpt of his article is below, but I strongly encourage everyone to click through for the full article as he gives much more insight that is well worth your time.

“NOT SO long ago only academics and jargon-prone management consultants spoke of the culture of organisations. Real, meat-eating executives had little time for this “soft stuff”.

“Today all has changed, as the culture of organisations has moved centre-stage in attempts to explain what went catastrophically wrong in countless institutions across all sectors. The latest example is the Gibbons-Shannon report on the deaths of children in the care of the State and a few weeks ago we had the reports on RTÉ’s Mission to Prey and the problems in AE in Tallaght. …

“There is nothing ‘soft’ about culture. It is the most difficult thing to change and it is high time that boards of directors and senior executives gave it due attention. A dysfunctional culture is a debilitating liability and may even carry the risk of corporate implosion as, for example, in the case of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and some Irish organisations. On the other hand, a culture based on a decent set of values is a precious asset.

“The significance of an organisation’s culture is brutally revealed in the health system. The suffering endured by people in hospital emergency departments has gone on for decades as they lay on trolleys or sat on chairs, for days on end in some cases. The problem seemed intractable without substantial extra resources.

“But in the wake of the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) report on Tallaght hospital, Sir Keith Pearson, chairman of the hospital’s interim board gave the lie to this analysis: ‘It doesn’t cost money to deliver dignified care; once you get the culture, the values and the behaviours right at the leadership level, you release the clinical staff to get on and do what they do extraordinarily well.’”

Note in particular 3 key points on culture Mr. Malloy makes:

Culture is not “soft.” As my CEO, Eric Mosley, and I pointed out in Winning with a Culture of Recognition, when done right strategic, social recognition is a powerful driver of organizational success and just as vital as any other strategic management practice.
Cultural failures can cost people their lives, or their livelihoods. Indeed, this is more stark in healthcare organizations where lives are quite literally on the line. But in every organization, in every industry, the culture you create (or merely allow to propagate), can build up or destroy the livelihoods of countless individuals.
Getting culture right releases limitless creativity, productivity and engagement. To paraphrase Sir Keith Pearson, create a supportive, positive environment that frees people to do what they do best, then get out of their way.

What examples of the failures of a poor culture – or the successes of a strong one – have you experienced?

How to Test the Strength of Your Company Culture

Recognize This! – Your company (and your culture) is only as strong as your people.

Readers of my blog know a central theme for me is company culture. In fact, it’s the subject of the book I co-wrote with my CEO Eric Mosley, Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

Now, Eric has published an article in Fast Company magazine (part 1 in a two-part series, actually), that dives into precisely how you can “test” the strength of your culture using the “outliers” in your organization. As Eric says in the article:

“In the statistical world, outlier is defined as ‘one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs.’ [Malcolm] Gladwell took this term and leveraged it to illustrate his observations regarding high achievers who excel in our society. I took a slightly different approach, applying this term based on what we know about today’s workforce–-and their impact on company culture.

“I examined both the people who are the highest of performers (those who exhibit desirable behaviors according to senior management) as well as those workers who exhibit less than desired behaviors yet still may be very strong producers. Let’s call them Behavioral Outliers.”

Eric then looks at the difference between the “positive behavioral outliers” and the “negative behavioral outliers,” questioning:

“Looking at both the positive and negative outliers, their success within a company can be traced back to the company’s culture (and how each are handled). The potential impact on the rest of the workforce and especially on overall company culture can be enormous. For example, should co-workers be forced to deal with the alienation and clear lack of a “team approach” for the sake of profits? In the long run, does this do more harm than good?”

Eric concludes the article with three tips for creating a strong positive culture that includes any outlier.

Click through to Fast Company to get the full picture on how to test the strength of your culture based on the behaviors of your employees.

Find Out How to Turn Employee Recognition into Measurable Results

Recognize This! -Your fellow HR Pros are the best help to create the culture you need. Join them in the next workshops near Boston and Philadelphia.

I and my colleague, Traci, had the honor and privilege last week to lead our first 2012 “Building YOUR Winning Culture of Recognition” workshop in Dallas. In true Texas fashion, the participants welcomed us warmly and engaged with each other, sharing their own experiences and knowledge.

That’s the real power of these workshops. I think of myself more as a facilitator, leading a discussion around best practices to help the HR Pros in the room interact, share, and arrive at new conclusions about how they can create their own, custom cultures of recognition in their organizations. Indeed, a key take-away from the sessions is a clear, direct one-page strategy for fostering such a culture and ensuring it thrives over time.

Aside from building this business case, other popular topics of conversation centered around the many benefits of consolidating multiple recognition, reward and incentive programs; the real, bottom-line business impact from strategic employee recognition; and how to get the most out of employee engagement efforts.

Some comments from participants following the session about their key take-aways include:

“Need to add manager training and regular push/pull communications techniques to our training/learning system.”

“Recognition needs to be a strategic element of our HR/Business objectives.”

“I already had an understanding that a culture of recognition does drive measurable results. This workshop provided me with the tools and ideas to achieve measurable results.”

If you’re looking to build the business case and create a culture of recognition in your organization, join us next month in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. I’m continually looking into new cities to visit, so let me know where you’d like me to go next.

Upcoming workshop sessions:

King of Prussia, Penn. – June 12, 2012 – Radisson Hotel Valley Forge
Greater Boston, Mass. – June 14, 2012 – Westin Waltham

All sessions start with breakfast at 7:30, then kicking off the workshop at 8:00. We’ll end at noon with a box lunch so those who need to rush back to work are free to go. But those who have time to stay and chat with us and their fellow participants further are more than welcome to do so over lunch.

Readers of my blog also get a 50% discount on the registration price. Just be sure to use code: RECOGNIZETHIS when registering.

Learn How to Build Your Culture of Recognition from the People Who Wrote the Book on It

Recognize This! – Join me for interactive sessions with other HR Pros to create your custom strategy and business case for your own winning culture of recognition.

Next week I kick-off my 2012 global tour in Dallas, leading interactive workshops to help HR Pros build their own wining culture of recognition.

At Globoforce, we wrote the book on this, including the five tenets and 10 associated tactics for how to build a measurable, strategic culture of recognition in which employees choose to engage and guaranteed to increase employee performance, productivity and retention.

Workshop attendees receive a copy of our book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition, along with an intensive 4-hour session as we step through these tenets and tactics to build a custom one-page strategy for strategic recognition in your own organization. You’ll leave with a compelling business case for strategic recognition in your organization.

Participants in past workshop sessions noted they were particularly valuable for the opportunity to network and discuss with like-minded colleagues from various industries on how to successfully create a culture of recognition.

Register today for sessions in these cities:

Dallas, Texas – May 10, 2012 – Hilton Dallas Lincoln Center
King of Prussia, Penn. – June 12, 2012 – Radisson Hotel Valley Forge
Greater Boston, Mass. – June 14, 2012 – Westin Waltham
(Stay tuned for more session location – or suggest a future destination in comments)

All sessions start with breakfast at 7:30, then kicking off the workshop at 8:00. We’ll end at noon with a box lunch so those who need to rush back to work can do so. But those who have time to stay and chat with us and their fellow participants further are more than welcome to do so over lunch.

Readers of my blog also get a 50% discount on the registration price. Just be sure to use code: RECOGNIZETHIS when registering.

4 Truths about Company Culture from BlessingWhite

Recognize This! – Culture is not optional, so it’s best to learn how to manage it to your advantage.

Tomorrow I’m wrapping up my workshop series on how to “Build Your Winning Culture of Recognition,” so I’ve been steeping myself in news on research on the topic lately. In October, BlessingWhite published an article on organizational culture in which they defined culture as:

“The sum of an organization’s behaviors and practices. It reveals itself in big and small decisions as well as daily practices (“how we do things around here”) that tend to perpetuate themselves.”

Every company has a culture. The crux of the issue lies in asking, “What are you going to do about it?”

You do not have to passively accept the culture you have today as the one that you must have forever in the life of your organization. Cultures can be proactively managed. In fact, my CEO Eric Mosley and I wrote the instruction guide on how to proactively create and manage a culture designed to increase employee engagement, performance and productivity – Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

BlessingWhite has validated the importance of taking this strategic approach to organization culture, concluding the article with these four truths (quoting):

So, if you are a senior executive and still have reservations about investing time on your organization’s culture, remember:

Culture is not optional — and letting your culture evolve organically will work against you.
Defining culture is the important first step — you do not need a “culture initiative” per se.
Leadership development and all employee-engagement initiatives are opportunities to reinforce and build the culture.
Executives ultimately have to hold themselves and others accountable for steering the culture.

Do you manage your culture? If you could change any aspect of your company culture, what would you change?

How to Successfully Build YOUR Winning Culture of Recognition

Recognize This! – Recognition programs are owned by HR. A recognition culture is owned by everyone.

Last week I had the honor and pleasure of leading two “Build Your Winning Culture of Recognition” workshops in Atlanta and New York City. In both workshops, it was clear people have a great desire to discuss employee recognition — especially to share with and learn from their peers from other organizations and industries. I owe all participants a tremendous “Thank You!” for their generosity in sharing their experiences, knowledge, and concerns with everyone, making each workshop truly relevant.

A common theme through both workshops was participants sharing their own practices and learning new best practices to implement in their organizations. The power of creating a true culture of recognition also resonated with numerous proof points around proven double-digit increases in employee engagement.

Another frequent point of conversation during the workshops centered on: “We’ve got a lot of those elements you’re discussing in our programs, but we don’t see the same results. Why?” This led to productive discussions around perhaps having the recognition “cogs, levers and wheels” so to speak, but needing to ask: “Have you got the right calibration of these for best results?”

For example, do you have strong executive support? Are you generating the right level of recognition across your organization on a weekly basis in order to achieve your annual goals and a true culture of recognition? Are you using Social and Mobile Recognition? Do you have a recognition dashboard showing program impact in real time? Is your management team focused on the impact of your company culture and the dissemination of your core values into the daily work of all employees? Or is your recognition program reporting only about how many toasters were redeemed last month?

Of course, company culture was also a central theme. We discussed at length whether a culture comes about by accident or if it can be deliberately created and managed. We uncovered how global strategic recognition is a powerful method to do just that, and especially focused on how a true culture of recognition is something that becomes owned by EVERYONE and not just HR!

I was most flattered to have participants tell me they appreciated the educational value and format of the workshop. Many left with a changed perspective on recognition, seeing it as an underutilized tool for HR, yet a tool they see could be more powerful if better deployed, and a more strategic contributor to HR and the business overall.

If all this sounds interesting to you, you still have two more opportunities to join me and your peers to “Build Your Winning Culture of Recognition.” Register today for workshops in:

Chicago, IL: Monday, Nov 14, 2011
San Francisco, CA: Thursday, Nov 17, 2011

Blog readers, be sure to use registration code RECOGNIZETHIS for half-off the registration fee.

3 Ways Organizations Must Change to Keep Up with Global Megatrends

Recognize This! – The way work gets done is changing. Century-old management structures must change to keep up.

Do you ever wish you had a crystal ball that could show you what you need to be doing now to create leaders equipped to handle the rapidly changing world of work?

Hay Group has provided just such a glimpse into the future and the guidebook to prepare in their Leadership 2030: Building the New Leader report. I’ve identified three clear themes in the report where a culture of appreciation built on strategic recognition fosters just this kind of leader needed to meet the challenges of “globalization 2.0.”

Global management requires flat, matrix organizational structures.

“Organizations will have to radically adapt their cultures, structures, systems and processes in order to survive the new world order – and managing in matrix structures, where information flows around the organization and around the globe in a way that renders traditional hierarchies and reporting lines redundant, is one of the biggest challenges. …

“In practical terms, this means that international companies need to adapt their global strategies for local markets – a process that will be helped by … encouraging more cross-country and cross-functional collaboration. They will also need to be more agile, as the best global companies operate like a flattened matrix, where information and authority flow in all directions.”

Traditional hierarchical management structures in which decisions flow down from the top will no longer work. Instead, organizations must encourage employees at all levels to build deep relationships across these traditional hierarchical boundaries as well as across teams, divisions and geographies.

One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through encouraging employees to notice and formally recognize the efforts, achievements and contributions of colleagues regardless of physical proximity. Nothing builds stronger relationships than successful collaborations based on appreciation and trust.

Employee retention morphs into personal loyalty.

“Additionally, they will need the ability to lead diverse teams over which they may have no direct authority and to find new ways of engendering personal loyalty in an environment where the old loyalties between employer and employee are declining due to the distance between them.”

Managers will truly become “leaders” of teams with members who report to other people in the organization. To get the best performance out of all team members, leaders will need to foster horizontal loyalty between team members regardless of position, level or reporting structure in the organization. Research has proven simply saying “thank you” increases the likelihood of people willingly helping again in the future – the foundation of loyal and productive teams.

Recognition and Values-Driven Engagement Become More Entrenched “Hard” Management Practices.

“Individualization has an enormous impact on employees’ loyalty and motivation to perform, with ‘soft factors’ such as recognition, self-development, self-direction, values-driven engagement and work-life balance often taking precedence over traditional factors like pay and promotion.”

My CEO, Eric Mosley, and I wrote the book on how to move recognition from anecdotal morale-booster to data-driven business discipline. Key to that is values-based recognition proven to increase employee engagement.

Read through Hay Group’s research. How else do you see these megatrends impacting your organization over the next 15 years?

BONUS: Register for my “Build YOUR Winning Culture of Recognition” workshop in Atlanta, Thursday, 27th October today between 10:00 and 2:00 (Eastern Time) using code ATLPASS and get your ticket for free!

Join Me to Build Your Culture of Recognition

Recognize This! -Building a solid business case for strategic recognition makes program launch and adoption much smoother and faster.

We’re rapidly approaching my first workshop on how to build your business case for strategic recognition. If you’re in the Atlanta, New York, Chicago or San Francisco areas, I would enjoy meeting you and working directly with you to create a culture of appreciation in your organization.

In the workshop you will learn how to:

Build the business case for your culture of recognition
Align recognition with company values and objectives
Define measurable results to uncover the ROI on your recognition investment

Dates and locations:

Atlanta – Thursday, October 27
New York – Friday, October, 28
Chicago – Monday, November 14
San Francisco – Thursday, November 17

Blog readers, use code RECOGNIZETHIS to get half off the registration price. I look forward to seeing you there!

Intertwine Company Culture & Strategy for Best Effect

Recognize This! – Culture and strategy cannot function as separate entities if the organization is to achieve its goals.

Organization culture is as important as organizational strategy. But the two are ineffective unless they are inextricably intertwined with each other.

A recent HR Review article on “Demystifying Corporate Culture” made this quite clear:

“Having a highly engaged workforce is not enough, however. It is equally important that organisational culture and strategy are aligned. A workforce that is pulling in the wrong direction—one that operates with enthusiasm but contrary to strategic intent—is detrimental to performance. A workforce that operates with enthusiasm and pulls in the right direction delivers improved performance and makes a significant impact on an organisation’s ability to achieve its strategic goals.

“Indeed, getting the right mix of strategy and culture creates a formula for business success. Pursuing a strategy of innovation in a dynamic market can only succeed within an inquisitive culture where the workforce pushes boundaries and management encourages new ideas and constructive risk-taking.”

Helping companies to proactively manage their company culture based on their core values and strategic objectives is what I do every day. It’s what my book Winning with a Culture of Recognition, co-authored with Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley, is all about.

Managing culture is only possible, however, if employees so deeply understand the values and objectives that it becomes possible for them to live them out in their daily work. How do you do that? As I discussed earlier this week, specific and detailed recognition of employees every time they demonstrate one of those values.

How does that make it possible to manage culture? A strategic recognition program encourages frequent and timely recognition by all employees of their peers and colleagues any time they demonstrate these behaviors and help achieve the strategic objectives. With each of these values-based recognition moments recorded and charted, company leaders can see at a glance where, perhaps, there may be less recognition on “innovation” than they would like. If this is happening in the R&D department, obviously immediate intervention is necessary. But if “innovation” recognition is low in the accounting department, that’s likely a good thing!

Is your culture intertwined with your strategy or do they stand alone? Which approach do you think is more effective?

“Bursts of Joy” on the Path to Achieving Your BHAGs

Recognize This! – Focus on the big goals, but don’t forget to celebrate the smaller achievements along the way.

Do you have any BHAGs – you know, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals? I do. My primary BHAG is to change the way the world recognizes and appreciates employees, changing company cultures for the better in the process.

That’s a daunting goal, indeed! And if that’s all I focused on, I might become overwhelmed by it. Instead, I always have that goal in mind while I work to shorter-term goals such as helping just one company, even just one HR pro at a time change their culture for the better. And I see success in this smaller goals nearly every day.

These shorter term achievements are critical to BHAG success, as recently described in the Financial Times article “Tiny Bursts of Joy Pave the Way to BHAGs.” Discussing Teresa Amabile’s research on the importance of honoring progress, the article points out:

“If companies hit big goals infrequently, and the incentives for reaching them have toxic side-effects, it would be better for them to find other ways to encourage worker engagement. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and her husband Steven Kramer, a developmental psychologist, believe an obvious, but often overlooked, approach is for managers to remove barriers to day-to-day progress at work. …

“Even quite small steps forward at work generated a burst of joy (yes, it sounds hokey – but they maintain it’s the correct word for what they discovered) that inspired creative work over a period of days.”

I’m looking forward to many personal “bursts of joy” in my upcoming workshop series: Build YOUR Winning Culture of Recognition. The entire purpose of the workshop is to bring together HR pros from across industries and help them create the strategic business case for how to change their company cultures.

I hope you can join us in any of the cities below:

Atlanta, GA: Thursday, Oct 27, 2011
New York, NY: Friday, Oct 28, 2011
Chicago, IL: Monday, Nov 14, 2011
San Francisco, CA: Thursday, Nov 17, 2011

Find out more information and register here. Blog readers should enter discount code: RECOGNIZETHIS for half-off the registration fee.

« Older Entries Newer Entries »

Event Spotlight

Archive for the "Winning with Recognition Book" Category