I often say that icing on mud pie does not a cake make. I read this quote recently…if your relationship with your manager is fractured, then no amount of in-chair massaging or company sponsored dog walking will persuade you to stay and perform. It is better to work for a great manager in an old fashioned company than for a terrible manager in a company offering an enlightened, employee-focused culture’ Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman ‘First Break All the Rules’….
Category Archives: Reward & Recognition
Having Fun in Government
I was at speaking at the Talent and Leadership Conference at the Marriott this morning and I was asked “What do you know about rewarding people who work in the public sector, we don’t operate in a world about profit, and we need to be sensitive to the allocation of public funds? I started answering the question based on metrics other than profit….but the question was not really about profit. I paraphrase the question to mean “We cannot be seen…
A sense of achievement puts us on top of the world
I feel fantastic when I’ve done something to be proud of. Something that was not necessarily easy but I worked at it and got a result. I always said that I would run a marathon when I turned forty. Do two halves make a whole? When it comes to Reward and Recognition it is no different. People want to be able to tell the world what a great job he or she did…but culturally we don’t tend to big note…
The Power of Choice.
At least a year ago after I had presented the three elements of a successful program at a breakfast for business leaders I was taken aside by one of the attendees at the end of the event. She said to me ‘You know that you were saying about how people will share about their experiences much more than talk about their possessions, well I agree to a point, but not all experiences are worth talking about.’ Of course at this…
Having Fun (and empathy) with Reward and Recognition.
We have found that there are three key elements to a successful reward program. 1. Acknowledgement (how do they want to be noticed) 2. Did they get to choose what to do? 3. A sense of achievement Now each one of these is an essay in it’s own right. What really works is the sharing of successful stories. I recently came across an article (though written way back in 1997) about simply remembering to have fun with reward and recognition….
Imagine running a business based on fun - that's what I decided to try when I left a very serious corporate career in marketing to set up RedBalloon...
You never know where the conversation ends up…
I was delighted to receive this photo from a client…It is from one of their 28 launch events as they rolled out the RedBalloon Program at each of their branch locations. When I opened it…I wondered who the people were… where do they live? I wonder what they have always wanted to experience. We never know where the conversation ends up and in what way people are talking about us – that they are is a privilege. “Remarkable isn’t up…