What’s a Leader Supposed to Do?

Recognize This! – A leader’s sole responsibility is to focus employee energy on achieving target objectives.

Leaders in an organization – especially people with the responsibility for managing others – are often overwhelmed with the many responsibilities, objectives and tasks on their own plates, much less those on their employees’. That’s why I enjoyed Chris Edmonds’ piece that focused expectations of leaders to one clear thing:

Source: www.drivingresultsthroughculture.com

Isn’t that the essence of what we expect our leaders/managers to do? Set their employees on the path to delivering strategic objectives and doing so in a positive, helpful way that reflects the company’s core values?

That’s precisely what strategic employee recognition is designed to help leaders accomplish:

1) Clearly communicate expectations through frequent, in-the-moment praise and recognition of employee efforts that help meet company goals

2) But not offer that praise unless such employee efforts are in line with company values and a culture of positive appreciation and recognition.

As we learned in Monday’s post of highlights from an HBR podcast:

"If managers just increased their praise and recognition of one employee once a day for 21 business days in a row, six months later, those teams as opposed to control group, had a 31% higher level of productivity." 


Do you agree? Is this list of 1 sufficient for what we need leaders to do? What would you add?

I’m launching my own blog – Recognize This! – on Monday, May 2. Content will be what you’ve come to expect here on the Globoforce blog, but with an expanded focus across the entire Talent Management spectrum. Current subscribers will move with me. If you want to subscribe to the corporate Globoforce Blog for new multi-author content on Globoforce news, events, customers and products, please subscribe here.

Five Steps to Change Your Company Culture

Recognize This! – Behaviors drive values drive culture. You cannot change the culture unless you address the underlying behaviors.


As the employee engagement discussion has grown, so has the discussion about the importance of company culture. After all, what is it you’re hoping employees engage with? As the importance of culture has surged, so has the resurgence of Edgar H. Shein (recently profiled in a Q&A in Strategy+Business).

For example, Schein explains the why well-intentioned efforts at culture change fail:

“They think that to change culture, you simply introduce a new culture and tell people to follow it. That will never work. Instead, you have to conduct a business analysis around whatever is triggering your perceived need to change the culture. You solve that business problem by introducing new behaviors. Once you’ve solved your business problems this way, people will say to themselves, “Hey, this new way of doing things, which originally we were coerced to do, seems to be working better, so it must be right.”

Using that as a starting point, here are five steps to changing your culture.

1) Do the business analysis to identify the culture you need to succeed – Is that culture innovative (Apple) or iterative? Low-cost (Wal*mart) or high-end (Lord & Taylor’s)? This is a critical definition as it will guide all future decisions.

2) List the values you believe are inherent in such a culture – If you want an innovative culture, you would likely include values such as “questioning."

3) Define the behaviors underlying each of those values – Under the value of “questioning,” you might include behaviors like “looks for a better way to do things,” “offers critical feedback in a desire to improve,” and “accepts feedback willingly.”

4) Communicate those behaviors to employees so they are understood in their daily work – Unless you communicate the behaviors underlying the values to the employees, they won’t understand what it is you need them to do.

5) Positively reinforce demonstration of those behaviors with frequent recognition – Such reinforcement, given to anyone at any level who demonstrates the needed behaviors in line with the values, ensures employees will repeat them, creating a continuous circle.

Or, as Schein explains it:

"One electric utility company I studied, Alpha Power — I can’t reveal its real name — was under pressure from regulators to improve its environmental record. Management told employees, 'Every oil spill on every sidewalk must be reported immediately and cleaned up.' A lot of electrical workers said, 'That's not me. I’m not a janitor. I splice big, heavy cables.' Alpha responded that this was an order, not an option, and that workers would be trained in cleaning up spills safely.

"Some electrical workers quit, but most were retrained. After about five years, the workers were asked, 'How do you feel about Alpha’s environmental policies?' They answered, 'It's the right thing to do. We should be cleaning up the environment.' That wasn’t what they’d said five years earlier. But once they embraced the behavior, the values caught up."


Change the behaviors, change the values, change the culture. Do you agree?

Company Values Are Vital to Culture * Whether You Follow Them or Not

Recognize This! – Employees will follow your lead on what you truly value based on what you recognize and reward.

Frequent readers of my blog know how I feel about company values and their influence on the culture of the organization. Ann Rhoades, president of PeopleInk and a founding executive of JetBlue (whose values are a topic of praise and a mini case study in our book Winning with a Culture of Recognition) wrote an entire book on the topic: Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition. She gave some highlights in a recent Smartblog post, saying:

“Just by looking at the behavior of leaders, you can tell what the values of a company really are. And all too often, those lived values bear almost no resemblance to the stated values — those lofty statements painted on the walls or sanctified in a mission statement. … Your values will be perceived as hollow and meaningless unless you base compensation and rewards on expressions of the behaviors that go along with the values.”

I couldn’t agree more. Regardless of the STATED values, it’s the TOLERATED values around which the culture is formed. Making the stated values and the tolerated values one and the same is possible through strategic employee recognition – structuring your recognition and rewards program such that:

1) Every recognition given is linked tightly (and with a detailed message about how and why) to a company value demonstrated. -- "Ann, great job on the MacGuffin project. The way you rallied everyone from multiple parts of the organization to pull together a comprehensive, detailed response embodies what we mean by 'Teamwork.' I'm sure your efforts will be the linchpin to our winning this business."

2) Such recognition is given frequently -- It doesn't do Ann any good to be reminded of her achievement a year later in her performance review or at the annual banquet if she barely remembers the MacGuffin project. If your goal is to encourage frequent repetition of such actions -- make it memorable in the moment!

3) Such recognition is given to 80-90% of employees, not just the top 10% of elite -- Far more than your top 10% are working hard every day to deliver the results you need. You must encourage all of them to repeat the actions and behaviors you've defined as necessary for success. In fact, research shows focusing on the top 20% is “a corrosive approach that discourages cooperation and initiative.” (Workspan magazine, December 2010, membership required)

In my organization, the values with more power and influence are the:

Tell me about your company culture. Do the company values as stated mean anything?

How to Stop Talking AT Your Employees

Recognize This: If you want employees to think like “owners,” give them a reason to care about the business like an owner would.

I’ve heard nearly every cliché under the sun for employee:

·         Team member

·         Partner

·         Customer Success Enabler

·         Owner (at an ESOP company)

What others have you heard? Why do I bring this up? Because too often such cliché attempts to “get employees to care more about the business” are undertaken as the solution. How ridiculous.

Judah Schiller, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, recently had this to say on Huffington Post: 

“Many companies are still missing the boat when it comes to getting their people to show up at work with their hearts, minds and bodies present. Most employees view work only as a means to an end--a way for them to collect a paycheck and receive health benefits. Part of the problem is that companies consistently fail to make a strong connection between their own "big picture" and its relevance to their employees. They continue to talk at rather than with their workers, dictating what's good for them, rather than making an effort to understand their wants and needs.”

Yes, employees want to understand the big picture. But simply telling them the big picture doesn’t accomplish the goal. You have to make that big picture real in their everyday work. And you can’t do that through a slick communications program, online newsletter or Twitter campaign.

If you want to make your “big picture” matter to your employees in such a way that they are focused on helping you achieve it in their daily work, you need to make it real for them.  The best way to do that is through strategic recognition in which you tell employees – frequently, honestly and specifically – how their individual efforts are helping the company succeed. Praise them when they get this right. Make it real in their daily work and connect that to how those efforts are contributing to achieving the company’s strategic objectives.

It takes a bit more effort than announcing all “employees” are now “team members,” but the results are far more effective – and you may have some fun along the way.

Also, don’t forget to tweet your tips for employee appreciation and recognition using hash-tag #appreciationtip to be entered to win a copy of the Winning with a Culture of Recognition eBook or Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with the eBook.

Global Integration of People Systems Delivers More to Your Bottom Line

Recognize This: Global integration of talent systems delivers 38% more Return on Equity (ROE).

Why should you care if your talent management systems and programs align with your company values and strategic objectives? Simple – you’ll see a much higher return on equity (ROE).

Ernst & Young reported in the January 2011 issue of Workspan Magazine (“Think Global, Act Global,” membership required):

“Companies that aligned their talent management programs with their business strategy enjoyed a 20% higher annual return on equity (ROE) over a five year period than those that did not. Returns were even more dramatic among those companies that integrated talent management programs, processes, and IT systems/processes on a global scale. These companies experienced an ROE over five years that was 38% better than those that did not.”

That’s precisely why we strongly advocate in our strategic employee recognition programs that customers:

1) Align business objectives and company values with reasons for recognition to make these come alive in the daily work of employees

2) Launch their programs to ALL employees in ALL global locations simultaneously, both to prevent any employees from feeling like “second-class citizens” if they’re not included in the initial launch, and to ensure program consistency on a global scale

3) Integrate recognition with performance management systems

Not only will you gain a much more complete and accurate understanding of how well your employees know and contribute to strategic objectives, you’ll also dramatically increase your return on equity.

Not a bad reason to go global and go integrated.

I Got More Money in My Paycheck?

Recognize This: Cash rewards go unnoticed, leaving no impression on employees of your appreciation for their efforts.

To my American friends and colleagues: Did you notice the extra money in your paycheck? According to an article in last week’s Boston Globe newspaper, most didn’t.

“‘What?’ said the professor waiting for a train at South Station. ‘I get extra money?’ asked the mom with her son. ‘I didn’t realize that,’ said the guy getting his shoes shined. Three weeks after a payroll tax cut took effect, few people are noticing the extra money — $40 a week for some, $10 to $30 a week for most — that Congress put in their paychecks.”

As I’ve written many times before, cash rewards do nothing to reinforce the messages you’re trying to send. Employees often don’t even notice it in their paychecks. As one client told us after surveying their 300,000+ employees, of those that even realized they’d received a cash reward, 29% used it to pay bills and 18% didn’t remember how it was spent. Is that what you were hoping to achieve?

Or, as one Globoforce colleague of mine recently related:

“At my last company, I got a $500 bonus directly into my direct deposit account. From the time I left work to the time I arrived home, my wife saw that bonus in the bank account and went shopping with the girls. I never even saw it.”

Do you want your employees to actually notice and value the appreciation you give them? Find another way than cash to recognize them.

You CAN Manage Your Culture. Behaviors Are the Key.

Recognize This: Changing and managing your culture is simple, but not easy. It begins with finding and praising the behaviors you want to underpin your culture.


We’re often asked about our book Winning with a Culture of Recognition: “Is it really possible change and proactively manage a company culture?”

Unequivocally, yes! And doing so is relatively simple. But it’s not easy.

The steps you need to take to change and manage the culture you want are fairly straightforward, as discussed quite eloquently in a recent Strategy + Business article, “Stop Blaming Your Culture,” by Jon Katzenbach and Ashley Harshak, but finding the courage, diligence and desire to take those steps is not easy.

The first step – an important realization – is that you cannot deny the power of the culture you already have. Rather, you have to find ways to work within that culture to encourage only those behaviors you want to see influence the new culture you desire and to discourage behaviors you don’t. Katzenbach and Harshak put it this way:

“You need to focus on specific behaviors that solve real problems and deliver real results. This, in turn, enables people to experience the results of thinking differently. Experience becomes a better teacher than logical argument.”

Or, for a practical example they use in the opening paragraph of the article:

“It would have been easy for Gray (new commandant of the US Marine Corps) to blame the damaged organizational culture for the problems he inherited, and to launch a formal, full-scale change initiative. But instead, he began to praise and seek out elements of the old Corps culture, such as the ethic of mutual respect.”

Seek out behaviors you desire as foundational to your culture. Praise the people demonstrating those behaviors. Repeat. Often.

Simple, but not always easy.

Do Amazing Things * Overcome Stereotypes

Recognize This: We all have the capacity to do amazing things. We need the desire – and sometimes courage – to do so.

Chris Ferdinandi, Renegade HR blogger, has done it again. For the second year in a row he has published a strong compendium of advice from HR experts on how to be amazing in 2011.

I’m honored to have my contribution on “Overcoming Stereotypes” included in “Do Amazing Things” this year. An excerpt:

“One [stereotype] we often hear in our line of business is: ‘People in China don’t want to be recognized individually.’ A client of ours proved this false simply by giving it a try. When implementing a new, first of its kind, global employee recognition program to all 33,000 of its employees, HR leaders knew the large contingent of employees in China couldn’t simply be ignored. … After program launch, the leadership team was pleasantly surprised to discover China had the fastest rate of adoption for greatest number of employees of the new employee recognition program.”

Other strong contributions from HR pros I respect include:

• Fail More (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Simplify, Simplify, Simplify (Lance Haun)
• Values, Not Words (Ben Eubanks)
• Break Out of the Boundaries (Paul Hebert)
• Become the Collaboration Leader (Steve Roesler)
• Be Curious (Ann Bares)
• Shadow Someone (Trish McFarlane)

I encourage you to read the eBook for great additional advice and thought leadership. What would you add as your recommendation to Be Amazing in 2011?

Making Your Company Values Real in the Daily Work of All Employees

Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of company values as the glue that holds us (employees, managers, leaders) together as we face unprecedented change in the workplace.

I received this comment to the post on HR.com:

“At the Manufacturing Skills Australia conference Prof. Alan Patching (Program Director 2000 Olympic Games) gave a great presentation. To open he asked the audience of 500 'does everyone in this room work for an organisation with company values?' A smattering of people raised their hands so Alan went to each one and asked them to detail those values to the audience. No one could remember them. My question to you is if company values are so crucial why isn’t it taken up by the workers?”

This is an excellent question and very important point about company values. Most people in an organization have no idea what the company values are. More importantly, even more have no idea what those values mean in their daily work.

Getting a group of people in a room to decide on the values, creating posters and plaques to hang those values on the wall, perhaps sending out a communications campaign about the values – none of these are worthwhile or in the least effective in making your values real to every employee.

Sure, we’d like to help your employees recite their values. But we’re far more concerned about your employees having the values so deeply ingrained that they both live out those values in their daily work and notice when colleagues around them do the same.

This is the power of Strategic Employee Recognition in which you:

1) Purposefully tie every recognition moment in the company to a company value
2) Detail more specifically how the person’s behaviors, actions or achievements reflected the values in contribution to project/customer/company success
3) Encourage everyone to notice and appreciate these “value demonstrations” in their peers and colleagues

When you do this, every employee now not only knows the values, but also knows what those values look like in their day-to-day efforts, knows the company considers these efforts and value demonstrations important, and is encouraged to repeat them.

If you make your company values real in this way for every employee, I guarantee they will be “taken up by the workers.”

Do you know your company values (no peeking at the plaque on the wall)? More importantly, do you know what those values look like in your daily tasks.

Values * The Glue Keeping Us Together during Change (Insights from HR Directors Business Summit)

I enjoyed dinner last night with several leaders of HR in various businesses. A common concern to all them seems to be the whirlwind of change currently blowing through these organizations. The forces of change I described in my post/report yesterday are real and seem only to be getting faster. The resulting question on everyone’s mind was: How do we keep everyone with us during all this change?

I started today hearing more of the same - from both the President and the Chief People Officer for McDonalds UK & Northern Europe. They painted a candid and thorough picture of the challenges McDonalds has faced over the years and how they have evolved their people management model to react.

Particularly striking to me was how Chief People Officer David Fairhurst shared the many changes occurring in the workplace and society in general, making the case that "we need a glue that will hold everything together with all these changes happening." That glue he identified as company values. "Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do" - a quotation from that other HR luminary - Elvis Presley!

I couldn’t agree more - values can be the glue holding employee needs and company success requirements together. As employees face so much change – at a pace that is historically the most rapid we've ever taken a workforce through – we need our employees to be resilient and have a clear line of sight for how we want to succeed together. Values can give this line of sight, and of course a values driven, strategic recognition program, is a proven robust approach to make these values come alive and be lived everyday in the corporation.

Values too was on CEO & President Jill McDonald's agenda when she highlighted as one of her top three priorities the need to break down silos and embed corporate values to create what she called a "connected organization". Her other two priorities included employee engagement for trust, and developing future talent.

Let me ask you, how do you plan on keeping everyone during all this change? What’s your “glue” to hold everyone together? What are your top three priorities for 2011?

Sacrificing Company Culture Puts Market Share at Risk

Recognize This: Commitment to your company culture cannot rise and fall with economy.

During the recession, many companies took harsh actions they likely had no choice but to do. But many others took similar actions out of fear or even greed.

Those who were able to stay the course, however, are now working from a much stronger economic position today. For example, Panera Bread’s Executive Chairman and Founder Ronald Shaich explained their approach:

“We've continued to invest in labor in our cafés and the quality of our people. We've invested in the quality of the food. When everybody pulled back and we did more, the difference between us and our competitors went up. And we've been taking market share. We had near double-digit [same-store sales] for over a year now. The stock has tripled in the recession.”

By staying the course in its commitment to its culture – the behaviors and actions that make the company work – Panera Bread is now taking the lead in its industry, even through a recession. This is not surprising, based on research I’ve written about before:

“With extreme downsizes (in workforce) in the long term, companies really do suffer relative to competitors in the same industry facing the same sets of economic conditions. Extreme downsizers are companies that cut their workforce by more than 20 percent. … Most of them lag their industry for as long as nine years after a recession.”

Can you afford to lose market position for 9 years? Did your company take drastic (or even moderate) actions in the recession? What effects are you seeing in your colleagues? Do you see any improvement as the economy improves or are the effects lingering?

How to *Manage* a Culture of Recognition

Recognize This: It’s possible to proactively manage a company culture with a little directed effort.

Once you’ve created a company culture, how do you manage it?

As we explain in Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Culture management is the direction of behavioral choices based on values. It is a clear communication, training, and reward system, and recognition is one of its tools. In fact, culture management is implicit in every organization. The relevant question is, will culture management be deliberate, measurable, and globally directed toward shared, transparent values? Or will it be haphazard, unmeasured, and individually directed toward vague or hidden agendas?”

There’s three key elements to managing your culture implicit in the above:

1. Directing – Managing culture is a proactive endeavor. You can choose to sit back and let a culture develop, or you can proactively create the culture you want that you think employees will choose to engage in and be most productive under.

2. Behavioral Choices – If you choose the pro-active route, you must make an investment of time and energy to notice, acknowledge and appreciate the behaviors of employees that reinforce the culture. You can’t do this once a year (or even once a month). You must do it in the moment so the behavior and the recognition are closely associated in the mind of the employee.

3. Based on Values – What behavioral choices do you reinforce? Those that reflect the values that you’ve already determined to be important to the success of your company. Again, recognition of employees when they demonstrate those values in their daily work is the best method to bring the values to life in a meaningful way.

Are you proactively managing the culture in your company? Is anyone? Or is the culture something that “just is” or “just happens?”

How to *Create* a Culture of Recognition

Recognize This: A culture reflects a process that has become a habit.

Now that we understand what a company culture is, how do you do it?

Patty Azzarello in TLNT offered this tip:

“Say thank you. Creating a culture of recognition is a very powerful thing. Make sure you have ways of knowing when good things happen, and personally thank people. Make recognition and appreciation a process and a habit.”

You need both.

Process: A system that both makes giving recognition easy and ensures that it happens. This process could be formal or informal, but it must become as much a part of “the way things are done around here” as product development or customer service.

Habit: This speaks to encouraging an attitude of recognition – an approach to every day at work where people stop, look around, notice what others are doing and take the time to say “thanks.” Habits take time to form and require encouragement as they settle in place. Managers are responsible for making sure “process” becomes “habit.”

Once that happens, your culture of recognition is firmly in place.

What kind of culture do you have in your organization? A culture of recognition? A culture of intimidation? A culture of cooperation?

What’s Your Company Culture? Look at the Behaviors.

Recognize This: Your company culture is a reflection of the behaviors you tolerate.

What exactly is culture, especially in the business context? Can an organization really have a culture? The answer, unequivocally, is: “Yes!”

Understanding your culture and, more importantly, knowing how to proactively manage it is an entirely different discussion.

Carolyn Taylor, author of Walking the Talk, explained culture and its importance in the workplace this way:

“Culture is the patterns of behavior that are encouraged or discouraged over time. These behaviors will either facilitate business performance, or they will hinder it. They will either be aligned to values that will build your brand and reputation, or they will not.”

Carolyn’s take on culture reinforces my own and Eric Mosley’s in our book Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“An organization’s culture is so much more than a slogan or poster. Culture is nothing less than the aggregate of tens of thousands of interactions every day. Leaders of great companies reinforce their values by rewarding and celebrating the behaviors that express those values.”

Globoforce’s culture (in addition to being a culture of recognition) is one of “others first.” For example, in our daily work we tend to put the needs of our colleagues ahead of our own. I’ve seen it repeatedly where someone will drop their own priorities to help another on a project that perhaps is a greater priority overall. And these people are consistently recognized and appreciated when they do.

What behaviors does your culture reinforce? A desire to “win” at all costs (even if less than desirable behaviors are required to win)? A commitment to improve the surrounding community (even if profits may be a bit less)?

How to Conduct a GAP Analysis of Leadership

Recognize This: Employees need Goals, Appreciation and Purpose, not just tasks.

Who do you consider good models of leadership? If you had the chance, who would you want to mentor you on your leadership style?

One person I’ve always admired is Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, national security advisor and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since he left public service, General Powell has made quite a career speaking and writing on what makes a true leader. SmartBrief recently ran a summary of key points from one such speech. I call these points a true GAP analysis of leadership, which I paraphrase as:

Goals: “When the followers know what the goals are, everyone understands the importance of their own role for the common purpose.”

Appreciation: “Make sure that those under your command understand that you appreciate what they are doing.”

Purpose: “People want to know that you are serving a greater purpose than just your own.”

Conduct your own GAP analysis – do your people know the goal? Do you appreciate and recognize them for contributions and actions that help you reach the goal? Do they know the greater purpose of their daily tasks?

If you could pick anyone in history, who would be on your list of leadership mentors?

Living the Values Should Not Equal Prostitution

Recognize This: Don’t prostitute your staff by paying them to work against their values.

Bnet recently ran an article on “10 Bad Ideas That Can Destroy Your Company.” No. 7: Incentivize people to boost performance struck home with me, making the point that traditional “do x, get more y” incentives often incent the wrong behavior.

“Build jobs around their core commitments, and pay them so that its fair, and you’ll get good performance. Ask them to work against their values for lots of extra cash, and you’ll make them feel like prostitutes.”

Know your own company values. Make your values a prominent part of your hiring process so employee personal values align with your corporate values. Then make the company values real for employees by recognizing them when they demonstrate those values in their daily work.

It’s not about rewarding them for “going above and beyond.” It’s all about recognizing them for living the values and promoting company success every day.

What are your key personal values? What are your company’s values? Are they in alignment? Better yet, tell me if your company has one set of stated values, but the way they work every day is in opposition to them. How do you handle that?

The Best Tool for Employee Behavior Change: Strategic Recognition

In my posts this  week, I’ve written about the critical necessity of the CEO’s personal values reflecting the company’s values and living up to both consistently. At the individual level, that’s the entire point of strategic employee recognition – bringing your company’s values to life in the day-to-day work of employees.

Let’s be perfectly clear. The point of implementing a strategic employee recognition program is not the “stuff” – the rewards employees choose. Sure the “stuff” is great as a reminder to the employee of the company’s appreciation of their efforts, extending the good feeling of the recognition moment endlessly. But that’s not the point.

The main point of a truly strategic recognition program lies in changing employee behavior – in proactively managing your company culture. As we explain in our book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Social architecture is to culture what a foundation, beams, and joists are to a building. Social architecture is the scaffolding of a company: communication, traditions, authority, privileges, and “ways of doing things.” It includes behavior cues like how people dress and how they talk to one another. It includes how excellence is recognized and rewarded because it’s a way of talking about the implementation of culture. …

“Three components of social architecture deserve special mention here. They are shared values, engaged employees, and united execution. Shared values, employee engagement, and united execution create a high-performance culture. Strategic recognition is the link connecting all three. …

“Strategic recognition adds the ultimate layer of value, which is culture management. Strategic recognition is linked to strategic goals such as engagement, employee satisfaction, or culture change. But also, because you have those tools, you get to then use strategic recognition to manage the culture. In other words, you can emphasize a single value that you feel doesn’t have the traction you need to meet your strategic objectives.”

It all comes back to your values. Are your company values just a plaque on the wall, or are they something your employees truly understand, living and demonstrating them in their daily work? If you want your values to come alive – if you want your employees to actually demonstrate those values in their everyday tasks – then you must recognize your employees, regularly and frequently, when they demonstrate those values. “Joe, great job dealing with Customer X yesterday. You were put into a tough situation with elements, like the product launch timing, out of your control. But you helped the customer understand our timelines and how we could help him in the meantime. The customer left happy and you fully demonstrated what we mean by Respect for Customer.’ Well done.”

If you can do this successfully – if you can bring your values to life – you will fundamentally change the behavior of your employees so they are in alignment with your company values, allowing you to manipulate your social architecture.

CEO Values Critical to Employee Loyalty and Motivation

Let me ask you a question. How well do your senior leaders model the behaviors they request of their teams?

SmartBrief on Leadership recently asked just that question in a poll on their site (results at right). Sadly, less than 10% answered, “all the time.” The greatest percentage, 40%, said, “most of the time, but have their moments when they don’t.” And the next greatest answer at 32% said, “sometimes, when it’s easy to walk the talk.”

It’s that slippage – those “moments when they don’t,” those “when it’s easy” efforts – that’s killing employee loyalty and motivation according to research reported in Knowledge@W.P.Carey (the School of Business at Arizona State University):

“Mid-level managers are likely to rally around their company only if their CEO truly values the interests of the organization and is not motivated primarily by self-interest, according to the study by W. P. Carey School of Business Management Professor Anne S. Tsui, Ping Ping Fu of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Jun Liu of Renmin University of China, and Lan Li of Chinese Entrepreneur Survey System. …

“In companies in which chief executives with transformational leadership behaviors valued above all the interests of the company and people -- both inside and outside -- middle managers demonstrated strong commitment to the companies and said they were unlikely to look for jobs elsewhere. But where transformational CEOs placed the highest values on personal fulfillment, the middle managers below them were less committed to the firm and more likely to seek positions outside the company.”

I’ve written before about the need to help employees align their personal values with the company values, and this never more true or necessary than in the CEO spot. A CEO who leads the company from a place of transparency, directed by his or her own personal values to the extent that those values permeate the organization to guide and direct its success as well, is the CEO whose team will remain the most loyal, most motivated and most productive in delivering what the CEO expects and needs for company success.

I’m lucky enough to have spent the last 10 years of my career working for such a CEO, Eric Mosley, who is also the co-author of our recent book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition. Eric built Globoforce on the same principles and best practices we share with our clients – frequently, timely, specific and meaningful recognition and appreciation of people when they demonstrate our company values and contribute to our success.

What about you? Does your CEO lead from a place of honest, consistent alignment of personal values with the values of your organization? How does that affect your loyalty to the organization?

What’s Your Company Culture?

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to any of my readers that I care quite deeply about company cultures. Indeed, I just co-wrote a book about it with culture right in the title – Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

I’m always interested when other write about company cultures, especially writers I respect. One such person is Chris Ferdinandi of the Renegade HR blog. He recently wrote on Pockets of Culture, saying:

“I’ve noticed that every organization has at least two (often three) levels of culture:
1) Organizational Culture. This is what most people think of when you talk about workplace culture. What’s it like to work at Acme Corporation?
2) Locational Culture. If your organization has more than one location, each one will often have it’s own culture. It fits into the bigger organizational culture (usually), but has it’s own unique quirks and idiosyncrasies.
3) Team Culture. Within each building or location, culture varies even further still by the team you’re on. The HR culture is different from the marketing culture, which is different from sales, and so on. It still falls under the cultural umbrellas of the organization and location, but the team culture is unique.”

Chris and I engaged in a comments discussion in which I explained my position that the trick is doing everything possible to keep all three cultures in alignment with the overall desired company culture. Sure, there’s good reason for sales (more risk taking) to develop a different culture from finance (more risk averse), but still remain in the bounds of the greater culture of, say, high integrity/ethics.

We believe the best way to encourage the necessary latitude but apply the equally necessary constraints is through your company’s values — but by bringing them to life in the everyday work of employees through strategic recognition. You do this by recognizing employees — regardless of team or location — when they demonstrate the behaviors that reflect the values the organization has deemed important company success.

What’s your take on the various cultures that can arise in an organization? Does your local or team culture align with your organizational culture? If it doesn’t, is that a good or a bad thing?

The Four “Anys” of Recognition

There are a lot of good people writing very well on the topic of how, when and why you should express your appreciation to colleagues, peers and subordinates. I occasionally like to feature them here, like these two writers whose recent work I admire.

Reba Spencer in the Toronto Globe and Mail offered sound advice and practical steps to “Rally the Troops in an Age of Austerity”:

“Without at least periodic positive feedback, employees may easily become unhappy, unmotivated and unproductive, because it's difficult to know the value of your contribution without feedback. And what goes for managers is also true of co-workers. While praise is often thought of as a “top down” activity, it shouldn’t be: Everyone should feel free to praise their colleagues – and their managers, too.”

And Scott Eblin offered excellent instruction in his Next Level Blog in “Why and How Leaders Need to Say Thank You”:

“Make it fresh: While revenge may be a dish best served cold, a thank you isn’t. When someone helps you out, thank them in the moment or as soon as you can.

“Make it personal: Acknowledge the time and effort your colleague spent to help you out. Just like you, they’ve got 24 hours in a day and no more. They made a choice to put off something that was important to them to give you assistance. Let them know that you appreciate that.

“Make it clear: The research shows that a thank you means more when the person being thanked understands the value of what they did. Make it clear in your thanks how what they did helped you.”

Reading their insights prompted this simple “Any” approach to recognition and appreciation:

1) Anyone Gives – Anyone, at any level, has the ability to notice, appreciate and formally recognize anyone else – both up and down the chain of command.

2) Anyone Receives – Anyone, at any level, with any performance history has the ability to receive recognition if they’ve done something worthy of it.

3) Anytime – There is no “schedule” for recognition, such as the annual Employee Appreciation Day. People deserve to be appreciated for their efforts in the moment – or as close to it as feasibly possible.

4) For Anything Deserving Recognition – Any behavior, action or result that you’ve pre-established as worthy of recognition (especially tied to your company values and strategic objectives) should be recognized and honored.

Did I miss “any”thing?

The Benefits of Global Consolidation & Consistency

How disjointed are your HRIS systems? We’ve found the larger and more global an organization, the more likely multiple, unconnected systems are in place, whether they are full-blown HRIS systems or employee recognition programs. That doesn’t means smaller organizations are immune. Any company with more than office likely has disjointed systems, if not incongruent customs within offices or even between teams.

TowersWatson and WorldatWork recently issued research showing:

“As economic and business conditions improve, employers are restoring some of the losses in reward programs and addressing their EVP. They are also rethinking their long-term business, talent and reward strategies, developing greater integration and consistency within and between programs, prioritizing their investments.”

Focused on talent management and total rewards, the study focuses on the benefits of “introducing organization-wide consistency in reward and talent management programs” that offer a cohesive, easily comprehensible employee value proposition to all employees, regardless of where they are based.

“Today’s increasingly global organizations are balancing the need for local variation in reward and talent management practices with the benefits of global consistency.”

According to the research, key business drivers for global consistency in reward and talent management programs are:
• Alignment
• Cost management
• Efficiency
• Quality

Those are precisely the reasons for (and benefits of) our global customers pursing globally consolidated strategic employee recognition programs. Some companies found they had opened themselves to great risk by not fully knowing or tracking where recognition was taking place, largely by well-meaning managers who would give an employee a “recognition gift” and then put the cost through an expense report – untracked and untaxed according to proper country requirements. This doesn’t even bring into consideration the dramatic savings possible (up to 50% at our clients) through efficiencies gained through consolidation. As the research cited above says:

“Organizations with globally consistent programs are more effective. There is a strong relationship between global consistency and effectiveness.”

If you’re considering expanding, adopting, or consolidating your employee recognition practices across multiple countries, or even multiple offices, be sure your provider can deliver the results you want on such a scale.

Finding – and Feeding – What People Want

Do you know what people want at work? If you’re not completely jaded, what do you fundamentally want at work?

I was struck that in the space of a week, I read essentially the same statement from two very different sources. From Talent Management magazine, in an article written by Madeleine Horman Blanchard, a business coach:

“Employees want to be successful at work. It makes people feel good to perform well. But to perform well, employees need to understand what a job well done looks like.”

And from a New York Times interview with Kevin O’Connor, chief executive of FindTheBest.com:

“People want to be good. They want to be successful. They need help believing in themselves. Sometimes they just need help to get going.”

Do you believe in the innate desire of employees to do well at work? I do. But I also think we, as leaders, play a critical role in feeding that desire – helping them to do well by helping them understand what it means to do well in their daily work.

As I’ve written frequently, the best way to do this is with strategic recognition that frequently and in a timely way recognizes an employee every time he or she demonstrates a company value or contributes to a strategic objective in their work. This kind of positive reinforcement clearly lets an employee know what you need from them – what success look like – in their own jobs and daily tasks. This is not at all abstract. Rather, it is concrete. It is personal. It is real.

Wally Bock, in his excellent Three Star Leadership blog, addressed this very well:

That's good, but it's not enough. Most bosses put all their attention on "bad attitude." What about good attitude? Define the observable or measureable things by asking the same question. "What does he or she do that makes me think they have a good attitude?" The answer to that question might be behavior or performance. It's also something that deserves some positive feedback. Recognize it, praise it, thank your team member.

What’s the benefit to you of feeding the people what they want? Garry Ridge, president and CEO of the WD-40 Co. explained it quite well in the Talent Management article referenced above:

“One positive benefit of defining what success looks like is that you can acknowledge and applaud success when it occurs. At WD-40, our engagement number is 93 percent, which I believe is three times the average. It means that people come to work doing things that mean something to them, that they feel is making a difference in the world today, and that is developing them internally as well. … WD-40 enjoyed the best year in the history of the company in spite of the down economy.”

Acknowledge and applaud success while helping your employees understand how they make a difference in the world today. Who doesn’t need that?

Winning with a Culture of Recognition * Launched Today!

Today is a very exciting day for me and for Globoforce. Our first book, co-authored by me and our CEO, Eric Mosley, launched today.

In Winning with a Culture of Recognition, Eric and I address the question: How do some of the world’s greatest company cultures succeed? The answer: They’re strategically managed using the power of employee recognition.

It really is that simple – the power of a “thank you,” strategically applied, gives you the ability to directly manage your company’s social architecture and, ultimately, culture. Winning with a Culture of Recognition demonstrates how strategic recognition is fastest and most effective way to impact employee performance and productivity and deliver positive bottom-line profits.

In the book, we give you a step-by-step guide for creating a culture of appreciation with strategic recognition. We share with you the stories of several of the world’s most respected companies who have achieved just that and the business benefits they’ve realized through simple appreciation, tied specifically to their company values.

I’m particularly proud of the advance praise we’re receiving for the book:

From Dan Pink, best-selling author of Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us: “Recognizing mastery, communicating purpose, encouraging autonomy, Eric and Derek offer practical guidance on how to create a company culture that feeds our true motivators,”

From Bill Catlette, co-author of the Contented Cows books: “A must read for any organization that wants to unify a global workforce, Winning with a Culture of Recognition captures the essence for why recognition is critically important for any organization that wants to engage employees and create a better culture. With case studies, industry data, and expert tips, Eric and Derek demonstrate why recognition is no longer a tactical HR program; it provides real business value. This book is a welcome addition to the business and HR shelf.”

Order your copy today on Amazon. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Winning with a Culture of Recognition * Order Your Copy Today!

I am quite excited to announce the coming availability of Winning with a Culture of Recognition: Recognition Strategies at the World’s Most Admired Companies, a new book co-authored by Eric Mosley, Globoforce’s CEO, and me.

In Winning with a Culture of Recognition, Eric and I look at why only 25% of employees choose to truly engage in their work – because most managers fail to recognize high performance and connect it with company culture. For the first time, employee appreciation emerges as a sound management method that moves recognition from anecdotal morale-booster to data-driven business discipline.

In today’s economic environment, compensation is only part of the employment contract. Employees need to know their efforts are valuable and that they are contributing to achieving the company’s changing strategic objectives. And they want to know their company actually lives the values displayed on the plaque on the wall. Seeing these values come alive in their own work and the work of their colleagues, then being able to recognize and appreciate peers for demonstrating these values, is critical for increased performance and productivity.

Strategic recognition programs are the key for employers who need to create a culture of appreciation, recognition, and reward, giving executives the tools to create and manage a culture of appreciation for competitive advantage.

In Part I of Winning with a Culture of Recognition, we dissect the powerful link between recognition and culture, how you can use recognition to manipulate your company culture, and the difference between strategic recognition efforts and the more common tactical recognition and incentive efforts many companies still use today.

In Part II, we give you the practical steps to build a strategic recognition practice and ensure program success.

Check out a review of our book in SHRM's HR Magazine (subscription required).

Winning with a Culture of Recognition is available for pre-order today. Stay tuned during the next several weeks for a few key excerpts from the book.

I look forward to hearing your feedback!

Aligning Company & Personal Values for Greatest Success

What are your personal values? What rules do you try to live your life by? As the thoughts swirl in your head, try to distill them down to 5-7. Mine are honesty, kindness, selflessness, caring, and integrity. These all interplay with others. For example, I do believe honesty is the best policy, but if my sister asks me if her dress makes her look fat, I may temper my answer with kindness and caring: “No, but I’ve seen you wear more flattering dresses.”

Just as my personal values naturally surface in my interactions and decisions outside of work, they influence my decisions at work as well. The same is true, I am sure, for those I work with, and likely for you as well. The research supports this as well. In findings Bret Simmons recently blogged about:

“One of the things this new research suggests enhances engagement is value congruence. Value congruence is the extent to which the individual can behave at work consistent with their own self-image. It’s very difficult to experience meaningfulness in our work if we are expected to behave in ways that are inconsistent with the highest values we espouse to ourselves and others.

“‘When individuals find that their role expectations pull for behaviors that they feel are inappropriate for their preferred self-images, they feel devalued, taken advantage of, and less willing to give themselves to their work roles. (Rich, et al., 2010, p. 621).’

“This is where leadership integrity comes in. Leaders with integrity in the eyes of their employees speak and act in ways consistent with what employees value. The leader’s personal behavior reflects values congruent with employee values.”

Value congruence. This is an even stronger reason for making your company values come alive for and in your workforce. If you’re promoting company values in any way, but then not acknowledging those values in the work (or ignoring violation of those values), then you’re setting yourself up to lose integrity in the eyes of your employees. And if your employees don’t trust you, don’t believe in what you as their boss are doing and working toward, then they will not work as hard or with as much purpose.

What are you doing to ensure your company values (and how they are recognized) are in alignment with employee personal values?