A valued reader weighs in below on why Recognition programs fail in reaction to this column I wrote over at Workforce.com... Thanks Ron!

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At 75, I have witnessed several formal Recognition Programs and have seen the flaws in all of them.   The downsides overweigh the upsides.

1. There is never a substitute for daily recognition from the boss – it is personal and real time.  Anything else is Management by Gimmick. 

2. Bosses are stingy with their thank-you’s because there is a formal program.

3. Recognition Programs typically evolve into personality contests.  Introvert contributors tend to get ignored.

4. For every winner, there are many losers and they feel like losers after the gala is over.

5. The losers tend to downgrade the alleged contributions made by the winners.

6. Instead of emulating the winners, the average person does what they always do.

7. The awards are not always  treasured by the winners, ala, give me money, not a parking space.

8. Most of the programs I have seen evolve into peer recognition programs due to the many flaws in the top down programs which become apparent.

9. The peer programs fade away too, because they are very popularity-driven.

10. A process of every manager of Catching People Doing Things Right is 10X more powerful.

I would have liked your dad.  My dad was a college teacher and I heard his shoes hitting the ground everyday too.  I also learned my work ethic from him.  External hoopla meant nothing to him and he didn’t wear a blue collar.

Employees are starved for meaningful work, a larger purpose and the need for a good boss.  Article after article are saying that employees leave bosses, not companies even the companies with Recognition Programs.

Ron
Ronald Ulrici
HR Director

As I've grown in my career, I've noticed that the best talent - not good talent, not good to great talent, but the best - has one thing in common.

The most talented people consistently "frame" their goals, work and outcomes via varied communication strategies.

What is Framing?  As I've watched the best among you grow, effective "framing" includes the following philosophy and actions:

--Use of a variety of communication techniques to ensure all know what the individual is working on - including face to face, email, reporting and more.

--Communicating what your goals are for a specific period.

--Communicating your challenges and progress.

--Communicating your wins and finished work product.

--Communicating your opinions and takes on what's going on around you in your area of subject matter expertise.

Effective framers among top performers are always proactive in these communications - vs reactive.  They also have a style that makes communications from them seem like a mix of status updates, op/ed and entertainment.  So no one is ever sorry to see the communication coming from them.

The naysayers to "framing" say that you're over-communicating.  If you suck at communication, context and perspective, that might be true.

The best performers, however, don't suck at framing as a form of communication.

That's one of the reasons they are the best.  They'll never be victimized by people claiming not to be in the know as a result.

Was working on a webinar deck this morning related to this title. Here's what I came up with, take a look and let me know what you think.  I'll share the webinar link when it goes live....

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WHAT WORLD CLASS HR LOOKS LIKE

You know them – they’re the HR pros that make it look easy, flowing from meeting to meeting with style and grace – but not in an empty way.  These HR pros look and sound great, but actually get things done as well.  They’re loved by their peers on the leadership team, routinely talked about with equal parts fear and admiration, and seem to love what they do.

What makes these people a part of the ruling class in HR?  I've got 15 attributes of the world class HR pro, broken down across the following DNA characteristics:

--The Ability to Be a Talent Agent – The best HR pros know that getting the best talent is key.  We’ll show you how they do that as an individual recruiter, in how they build a recruiting function and build an employment brand.

--A Knack for Street-Smart People Development – Forgot the training department.  The HR pros we look up to bootstrap their own training resources for both individuals and managers while serving up spend on development based on performance – always taking care of the top performers.

--Financial Chops that Rival PWC – The real players in HR budget with a purpose, are keenly aware of other department’s strengths and weaknesses from a P&L perspective and apply their FTE power in a direct relationship to financial strength and opportunity within the companies they serve.

--A Willingness to Jam All Transactions Down to Their Lowest Possible % - The greatest trick the devil ever played was making humans feel satisfied when they mow the grass.  We’ll show you three ways the best HR pros counter this trait of humanity by ensuring the value of their team isn’t linked to transactions.

--The Ability to Say Yes AND the Skill to Negotiate Like a VP of Sales – We saved the best for last.  Top HR pros know how to negotiate – we’ll show you two ways they excel at negotiation and cover how the ability to say yes inside your company is key to this strategy.

Does that sound like any HR pro you know?  I hope so!

Capitalist Note: Please make it stop.  This slow season on the sports front is killing me. Can football go ahead and get here so we have some meaningful programming?  No, baseball doesn't count - sorry - at either the pro level or the Little League World Series level.  BTW, while I'm ranting, when did Little League games at the sub-regional level become ESPN fare?  Do I really care about Lansing, MI vs Kalamazoo, MI in the sub-regional qualifier?  Why is that on ESPN?  Shouldn't kids be in school?

Related - get off my lawn.  Below is a post on coaching skills in NFL training camps and the connection to your talent - to get you through this trying time on television.

Some of you are NFL fans. Remember "Bountygate" in New Orleans, where the team was paying bounties for vicious hits and knocking opposing players out of games? Read up here if you need a refresh - the whole scandal caused coach Sean Payton and his defensive coordinator to be suspended for an entire season.

That defensive coordinator?  It's a guy named Gregg Williams, and last year he was Defensive Coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams, the team featured on the HBO series "Hard Knocks", which basically puts 100 cameras in training camps and then crafts a show around it. It's a great series, check it out if you haven't.  (note - Williams is in Cleveland this year and Hard Knocks is in Tampa, where I just saw them cut a kicker they wasted a draft pick on two years ago.)

Back to Gregg Williams - as you might expect, a guy who's been suspended for a season for being inside a bounty system (something that was common in the NFL in the past and not limited to the Saints, btw) is a little salty when talking to his players.

Here's a great highlight from episode 3 of Hard Knocks in 2016. The scene is a film breakdown of the first pre-season game and head coach Jeff Fisher has warned the team to prepare for real talk when they break up into their various units for the film breakdown.

Enter Gregg Williams, who begins his film breakdown with the following gem to the team:

"Now, you’re saying, ‘There it is, Gregg’s being a dick again.’ No, I’m f**king trying to figure out how I can f**king help you make this team,”

Translation - if you listen to what I say and make adjustments, you'll have a better chance of not being cut.  If you choose to focus on the fact your performance is being criticized and don't hear what I'm telling you, you're missing an opportunity.

I loved this clip because while harsh, it underscores what everyone who manages people has to accomplish before coaching for improvement can begin - asking for the focus of your coaching to assume you have positive intent in coaching them.  You're not trying to be an ass, you're trying to help them.

Can you accomplish that in a softer way than Williams? Yes.

Will a lot of you go too soft and invite the recipient of your coaching to view the feedback as optional?  Also yes - which is not good.

Conveying a sense of urgency when coaching is art, not science. There are a lot of ways to get it done.  You may hate the way that Gregg Williams does it.

Just don't assume, because you're more professional, that your coaching is more effective.

OK - that title's click bait, but wait, don't leave.

First up, Reuters DID report that American employers saw at least $694 million in missing output from the roughly 20 minutes that outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated workers took out of their workday on Monday, Aug. 21 to stretch their legs, head outside the office and gaze at the nearly two-and-a-half minute eclipse.

I shared that on social media and meant to add this tongue in cheek preface - "If they think that's bad, they should check out the lost productivity around talking about Game of Thrones."

The feedback on LinkedIn (one place I posted it where the preface cited above wasn't included) was swift.  People called BS on the number.  Kinda said I was stupid for sharing it.  I tried to explain the witty add I planned didn't make it on the post.  They didn't care.

But Netflix came out with another number I thought was interesting - see tweet below:

Hey, just wondering why 10% of you chose to watch a giant rock cover a giant ball of gas when I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR YOU.

— Netflix US (@netflix) August 22, 2017

According to the streaming service, Netflix lost 10 percent of its usual viewership during the total solar eclipse that took place Monday, which put a portion of the US in a state of total darkness while the moon blocked out the sun.

The workplace numbers likely assume that 100% of working Americans stopped working to view the eclipse.

The Netflix numbers say that only 10% of Netflix viewers stopped watching to check out the event.

Netflix is taken more seriously than work.

Think about that one for a bit.  

You hate Glassdoor.  But amidst all the negativity - and the fact your worst employees are at least 5 times more likely to leave a review than your best employees - are nuggets of truth.  Can we agree on that?

I was looking up a company over the weekend and found this gem.  Please click through or enable pictures if you're an email subscriber for the clip below.

Manager - "We've got to let you go. You're not a good fit."

Employee - "Why am I not a good fit?"

Manager  - "Um, Look, I'm not getting into that now."

Don't ask me who the company is.  I'll never tell, because this could happen anywhere.

#gold

Here's a 9-box from a department in our company - performance on the horizontal, potential on the vertical.  

Not bad at all.

Some like Picasso.  Some like Warhol.

I think this is art.  If you want to order this as a print for your office, let me know.

(email subscribers click through to see graph below):

You're going to love this one...

In his 2015 book, "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," Ashlee Vance shares the story of how Musk stopped working with his longtime executive assistant in early 2014.

According to Vance, the assistant, Mary Beth Brown, asked Musk for a significant raise after she'd been working with him for 12 years. In response, Musk told Brown to take two weeks off, during which he would assume her responsibilities and see whether she was critical to his success.

When Brown returned, Musk told her he didn't need her anymore.  

Whoops.  

OK, couple of things.  While Musk generally is on the record as saying this book is accurate he strongly denies the reporting of this encounter.  Brown also denies the reporting that she lost her job through the rigid efficiency study conducted by Musk.  Also, after Brown was no longer in the role, Musk says he needed the position, as evidenced by the fact he hired 2-3 specialists (PR, etc.) rather than a generalist executive assistant.

Still, where there's smoke, there's fire.  My take is that Musk probably did consider whether the position still worked for him based on the way his business has changed.

Add this to the list of things to be careful asking for.  The most common error employees make is taking an offer to their boss expecting a counteroffer.  The boss, rather than countering, wishes the employee luck in the new position.

Want a raise?  Interesting.  How about you take a couple of days off while I determine how vital you are to the organization?

Elon Musk.  The most interesting man in the world.

Thursday was Shannon Russo's Birthday!  Shannon's my partner at Kinetix, a driven leader who created a female-owned business in America in 2004.  I was fortunate to invest in 2010 and she's been a great friend every since.

The thing about driven leaders is that people can either love them or... They don't love them so much.  Shannon's respected and loved by her people, so much so they aren't afraid to provide a roast of sorts by giving their best impersonations of Shannon on video!

See the video below for the Shannon Russo impersonations from a few of her team members at Kinetix!

(email subscribers may have to click through for video) 

If there's anything that will get a healthy dinner conversation going (or get people fighting), it's the idea of the $15 minimum wage.  A better wage for core entry-level workers is hard to argue against as a reasonable person.  I want it to be true as a moderate, but my business focus always makes me wonder - is it actually a good idea?

This is the problem being a moderate.  I'll get 5-7 emails from each side on this post just crushing me for even daring to be in the middle.  Only the polar extremes get the oxygen and attention these days.

Fortunately, there's some research pouring in on the minimum wage that seems to be based on reality, not theory.  

More from the Washington Post

There’s bad news from Seattle for advocates of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law. Turns out the measure’s costs to the city’s low-wage workers have outweighed benefits by 3 to 1, according to a new city-commissioned study by University of Washington researchers. The average low-wage worker has lost $125 a month because of the higher-wage decree, the study found — even before it is fully phased in.

David Autor, a leading labor economist at MIT, told The Post the study seemed “very credible” and suggested that it might have enough “statistical power” to “change minds” in the perennial argument over the minimum wage.

Autor was wrong — not about the study’s credibility, but about its potential for moving people off their “priors.” The Seattle study met a furious counterattack from proponents of a $15 minimum. Defenders of the law came armed with a much rosier assessment of its impact by economists at a pro-labor University of California at Berkeley think tank, produced a few days before the more skeptical one came out.

It seems that Seattle’s mayor, a big advocate of the $15 minimum, had gotten a heads-up on the impending negative study and asked the Berkeley group to weigh in. Seattle Weekly called it “an object lesson in how quickly data can get weaponized in political debates like Seattle’s minimum wage fight.”

Woof.  Go dig in if you dare, but the UW study found that businesses react to the $15 wage by contracting total work hours, which results in low-wage workers in the area losing $125 per month due to the law.  That's interesting.  But if you go look at the Berkley study, you'll see the opposite.

If you really want to geek out, see this article at 538.  It talks about limitations of both studies.

My gut tells me this.  Businesses probably will restrict total hours to low-wage workers when minimum wage hikes hit because the margins for success are so thin.  The left and anyone else can shake their fist and wax poetic about evil owners trying to stay cost-neutral on labor expense.

But the critics don't risk their capital or their livelihood.  Add more labor costs to any business with limited margins and one of two things is going to happen - prices are getting raised or labor cost is getting scrutiny.  Prices are hard to raise from a competitive perspective.

I believe the UW study.  Sucks to be an owner when laws get passed by people who don't have to live with the consequences.