recognition, gratitude, and celebration

8/10/2019 Recognition, Gratitude, And Celebration

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Recognition,

Gratitude, &Celebration


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Also available from ASQ Quality Press:

How Organizations LearnPat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt

Quality Makes Money: How to Involve Every Person on the Payroll in a

Complete Quality Process (CQP)Pat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt

The Executive Guide to Understanding and Implementing EmployeeEngagement Programs: Expand Production Capacity, Increase Revenue,and Save JobsPat Townsend and Joan Gebhardt

Inside Knowledge: Rediscovering the Source of Performance ImprovementDavid Fearon & Steven A. Cavaleri

Everyday Excellence: Creating a Better Workplace through Attitude,Action, and AppreciationClive Shearer

Linking Customer and Employee Satisfaction to the Bottom LineDerek Allen and Morris Wilburn

Work Overload: Redesigning Jobs to Minimize Stress and BurnoutFrank M. Gryna

Making Change Work: Practical Tools for Overcoming HumanResistance to ChangeBrien Palmer

The Team Effectiveness Survey WorkbookRobert W. Bauer and Sandra S. Bauer

Root Cause Analysis: Simplified Tools and Techniques, Second EditionBjrn Andersen and Tom Fagerhaug

The Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence Handbook:

Third EditionRussell T. Westcott, editor

Enabling Excellence: The Seven Elements Essential to AchievingCompetitive AdvantageTimothy A. Pine

To request a complimentary catalog of ASQ Quality Press publications, call800-248-1946, or visit our Web site at http://www.asq.org/quality-press.


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American Society for Quality, Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI 53203 2008 by ASQAll rights reserved. Published 2007.Printed in the United States of America.

13 12 11 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Townsend, Patrick L.Recognition, gratitude, & celebration / Patrick L. Townsendand Joan Gebhardt.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-0-87389-726-6 (alk. paper)

1. Incentive awards. 2. Personnel management. I. Title: Recognition,

gratitude, and celebration. II. Gebhardt, Joan E. III. Title.HF5549.5.I5T69 2007658.3'142--dc22

2007034568

Originally published 1997, Crisp Publications, Inc.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without theprior written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: William A. Tony

Acquisitions Editor: Matt T. MeinholzProject Editor: Paul OMaraProduction Administrator: Randall Benson

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Attention Bookstores, Wholesalers, Schools, and Corporations: ASQ QualityPress books, videotapes, audiotapes, and software are available at quantitydiscounts with bulk purchases for business, educational, or instructional use.For information, please contact ASQ Quality Press at 800-248-1946, or writeto ASQ Quality Press, P.O. Box 3005, Milwaukee, WI 53201-3005.

To place orders or to request a free copy of the ASQ Quality Press PublicationsCatalog, including ASQ membership information, call 800-248-1946. Visit ourWeb site at www.asq.org or http://www.asq.org/quality-press.

Printed on acid-free paper


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For

Ruth Gebhardt

and

Katherine Townsend


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vii

Contents

Chapter 1 Polite is Also Politic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2 Saying Thank You is Good Business . . 3

When Reason Becomes Unreasonable . . . . . . . . . . . 3The Downside of the Rational Approach . . . . . . . . 5Linking Leadership and Thank You . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Training to Say Thank You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Blending the Rational and Emotional . . . . . . . . . . . 10Its Just Good Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chapter 3 A Philosophical Caution or Two . . . . . . 13

Did Anyone Hear You Say Thank You? . . . . . . . . . 13It Doesnt Always Sound the Same . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Effective Programs Require Options . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Taking Thank Yous Personally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Having the Right Attitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Sincerity Means the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Practice Makes Perfect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18The First Thank You Is the Hardest . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Looking for a Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20


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Chapter 4 Thank Yous by Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Recognition Is Not Compensation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23There Cannot Be Winners and Losers . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Not All Successes Are Basedon Quantitative Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Recognition Is Not Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Recognition Is Not Based on Luck or Fate . . . . . . . 25Employees Must Contribute to the

Recognition Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Gratitude Should Be Timely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Recognition Is a Personal Experience . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Recognition Is Fun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 5 Many Thanks, YAll! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The Difference Between Incentivesand Gratitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

The Thank You Ceremonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Mixing It Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Keeping the System Honest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Surprises, Surprises, Surprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Chapter 6 Yankee Ingenuity and Texas Charm . . . 43

Quality Coins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Paul Reveres PEET Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45Short-term Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Recurring Celebrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47You Cant Just Say It Once a Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Imitation Isnt Always Flattering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Daily Recognition Is Best . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

viii Contents


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Contents ix

Chapter 7 Thank Yous of All Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Thank Yous Dont Have to Be LikePulling Teeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Tri-dent True Thank Yous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Examples and Ideas from Winners of the

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award . . . 61A Quality Builder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Postscript: And, in Closing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77


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1

1

Polite Is Also Politic

You are nine years old. It is the day after your birthday

and you are seated at the kitchen table with a stack ofstationery in front of you, chewing on the end of the

pen. You have been given a task to accomplish before youcan go out and play. What is it? You guessed it: You have tofinish those pesky thank you notes.

It wouldnt be such a chore if people always gave yousomething you really wanted. But they dont. Aunt Hazelsent paisley pajamas that you swore silently youd never

wear, and what could have possessed Uncle Milton to selecta book of poetry? And yet, and yetyou still feel a glowthat they both remembered you. Aunt Hazel is a nice lady,and you know she deserves recognition for her effort. Then,too, Uncle Milton sent a baseball glove last year, and heeven plays catch when he comes over for dinner. Maybe hedidnt hit the bulls-eye this time, but you do want him tokeep trying, dont you?

There in a nutshell are the two reasons for saying thank

you: one emotional and one rational. People deserve athank you not only when they make a special effort, butwhen you want them to repeat the effort, too. At nine yearsold, you may have needed help figuring out that saying


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thank you strengthens relationships and encouragesdesired behavior. Adults, however, know that when itcomes to saying thank you, good manners and good sense

are the same. They know that saying thank you is not onlypolite, but also politic. Or do they?

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3

2

Saying Thank YouIs Good Business

Its not my job to say thank you. The speaker was the

president of a Baby Bell company; the setting was aworkshop taught by a team of consultants for the top

thirty senior managers. A silence descended. One consul-tant observed quietly that he didnt consider saying thankyou a job, he found it a pleasure to speak to people abouttheir accomplishments. There was no response. The other,less-tactful consultant asked if anyone in the room wouldenjoy hearing thank you from the president. The response

was eloquent. People began dropping pencils, checking thecontents of pockets, fiddling with papersanything toavoid catching the presidents eye.

Everyone likes to hear thank you. Why then is it so hardto say? Some of it may be left over from the time when youwere nine years old and people didnt do exactly what youexpected or you just couldnt find the words. In a businessenvironment, however, the failure to say thank you moreoften than not signals a misguided attempt to maintain a

purely rational relationship between people.

WHEN REASONBECOMES UNREASONABLE

I dont have to say thank you for thatthats their job. Howoften have you heard that? It sounds sane enough, but its


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really a mini temper tantrum. Think of it this way: There arewritten job descriptions and de facto job descriptions. Whatcounts is what happens on a day-to-day, week-to-week

basis. Whatever someone did in the period before the lastpaycheck isby agreementthe de facto job description.When someone goes beyond that and does something thatyou want done on a regular basis, the only truly rationalthing to do is to mark the occasion by saying thank you.Only by doing so can you hope to have that new behavior

become part of what happens as a matter of course. Saying

thank you goes a long way toward locking in animprovement by giving it official sanction. The alternativeis to get on your high horse and run roughshod over anyimprovement.

4 Chapter Two

Figure 1 Saying thank you is good business.


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Saying Thank You Is Good Business 5

THE DOWNSIDE OFTHE RATIONAL APPROACH

Not everyone, of course, displays such a narrow-mindedapproach. There are even elegant attempts to keep relation-ships purely rational: These are commonly known asincentive programs. In incentive programs, the employee isoffered a quid pro quo for predefined accomplishments,usually in the form of a percentage of savings or a bonus orsomething of substantial monetary value. When theincentive is linked to cash, the manager can avoid the needfor an emotional involvementor personal contact of any

sortby delivering the incentive in the employees payenvelope. When the incentive is linked to merchandise, theemotional component is usually stronger but not necessarilypersonal. There still may be no interaction between the giverand the recipient. Best of all, incentives appear to be so fair.Someone does something special, they receive somethingspecial. Yet a negative emotional overlay remains. The wordbribe comes to mind. So do the words winner and loser. All area far cry from thank you.

Thank you taps into a different set of emotionalresponses. It implies recognition, gratitude, and celebration.Thank you is profoundly personal. Although incentives and

bonus programs are certainly workable and have a longhistory of leading to positive results, they dont replace aprogram to say thank you; at best, they can supplementsuch a program. Nor do regular promotions and salaryincreases act as replacements. Both of them are designed to

meet fair payment standards. The extra effort, theidentification with the good of the organization, the joy of ajob well donethe intangiblesget short shrift if salarypayments and job promotions are all that happen.

The most absurd argument against saying thank youwith some kind of gift or ceremony is mounted by puristswho insist, If we start rewarding improvements, employees will


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start looking for ways to improve for the wrong reason. Doesanyone really care about anyone elses private motivationas long as their behavior contributes to the organizations

improvement? The question is, rather, does the companywant the employee to continue behaving in this new,improved way? And what is so wrong about the veryhuman need for encouragement and praise?

LINKING LEADERSHIPAND THANK YOU

Saying thank you not only inspires recipients, it also leads to

personal growth on the part of the person astute enough toemploy those words. Recognizing the achievement of others,expressing gratitude, and celebrating successes are all actsand responsibilitiesof leadership. Two definitions ofleadership apply here: one that defines leadership relative toits cousin concept, management, and one that simply definesleadership.

Quite simply, a manager cares that a job gets done,whereas a leader cares not only that the job gets doneheor she also cares about the people who do the job. In short,a leader cares about other people. Leaders not only care,they take actionwhich leads to the second definition ofleadership:

Leadership is the creation of anenvironment in which others can self-actualize

in the process of completing the job.

Leaders not only see others as individuals and valuetheir contributions, they also work to create circumstancesthat enable followers to meet basic needs for self-esteemand growth. When you acknowledge how well someonedoes the job, when you provide the information and toolsthey need to perform to the peak of their abilities, when

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you make sure they know that you appreciate their jobperformance and how it fits into the overall scheme ofthings, you are helping that person move to the top of

behavioral theorist Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs(see Figure 2).John Ball, then the Service Training Manager at

American Honda Motor Company, once made this connec-tion between saying thank you, leadership, and action:

I try to remember that peoplegood, intelligent,capable peoplemay actually need day-to-daythanks for the jobs they do. I try to remember to

get up out of my chair, turn off my computer, gosit or stand next to them and see what theyredoing, ask about the challenges, find out if theyneed additional help, offer that help if possible,and most of all, tell them in all honesty that whatthey are doing is important: to me, to thecompany and to our customers.1

Self-Actualization

Autonomy andSelf-Esteem

BelongingnessandLove

Safety andSecurityPhysiological Needs

Figure 2 Maslows hierarchy of needs.


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Management is a subset of leadership, a subset withoutthat something extra. Managers, for instance, often allow theno news is good news approach to determine their habits for

contacting people. They operate on the basis of, If they donthear from me, employees should assume that all is well; and if Idont hear from them, I should be able to assume that all is well.Leaders take every opportunity to make contact, and whenno opportunity exists naturally, they make the opportunity.The result is a strong emotional bond based on mutual trust.

TRAINING TO SAY THANK YOU

Fortunately, as with every other aspect of being a leader,training and growth can take place in the area of sayingthank you. The starting point may be as simple as talkingabout it. In an ideal world, the senior person in theorganization would lead the discussion of why and how tosay thank you. In a not-quite-ideal world, anyone (includingan outside person, possibly even a paid consultant) couldlead the discussion. Such a dialogue can be the first step inhelping an executive let go of old ideas about incentives and

a purely rational workplace. The trick will be to get every-one to take part. Silence does not necessarily mean consent.It could mean that the nonparticipant has decided to ignoreany group conclusions. Individual study, perhaps in theform of assigned reading, is also appropriate.

Saying Thank You Isnt Always Easy

What cannot happen is for an organizations senior

management to assume that this aspect of being a leader isnatural for everyone. Saying thank youespecially takingpart in the emotional aspects of expressing gratitudedoesnot come easily to everyone. For some people it means aradical change in behavior. This is not entirely unexpected.Some parents, for instance, are much better at giving theirchildren practical toys (or checks) than they are at givingthem hugs of either the physical or mental variety.

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But the Benefits Are Worth It

There are benefits for individuals who overcome theirpersonal inhibitions about saying thank you (see Figure 3).

For example, saying thank you is funonce the basics aremastered. It provides an oasis in a pressure-packed day,something to look forward to for both the manager and theperson(s) being thanked. It may come as a surprise, butfeeling good at workfeeling good about your individualcontribution or about other peoples reaction when you takenote of their contributionsis neither illegal, nor immoral.

Then, too, a manager who regularly says thank you willfind himself or herself with a reputation for being a goodleader. Leadership is in the eye of the follower, and there isno better way to ensure that others form a positive opinionof you. Everyone likes to hear someone say thank you, andit is only human nature to think well of anyone who makesthe effort.

An unexpected dividend of saying thank you is thatmanagers become recipients of information to which theymight otherwise not be privy. People are eager to tell

Figure 3 Personal benefits of saying thank you.

Enjoyment of your time on this planet

Growth toward being a leader

Rewarding reputation with senior managers

and subordinates

Positive connection with your subordinates

Knowledge of the capabilities of your

subordinates


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someone what they have done and what they are workingon, especially if they expect to receive praise for it. Thoseexchanges can be invaluable when it comes time for a

manager to make decisions about promotions, pay raises,budget allocations, restructuring, or selection of a specialteam for a high-visibility project. The manager will havefaces to go with names and will know individual strengthsand the combinations of coworkers that have clicked in thepast. In short, managers who say thank you will be able todo a far better job of managing their piece of the organiza-tion as well as their own future.

BLENDING THE RATIONALAND EMOTIONAL

Saying thank you, as with almost everything that happensin the name of leadership or quality or any otherworthwhile effort in the workplace, is a blend of thingsrational and things emotional. On the personal level, theemotional component is the fun; the rational component isthe personal growth. On the organizational level, theemotional component is the warm glow that comes with

being thanked. Someone on an assembly line or in anexecutive suite deserves to feel that sensation as much as akind relative does. The rational component is that organiza-tions continue to benefit from efforts to improve. And oneof the ways to ensure continual improvement is by sayingthank you.

Improving employee behavior. Saying thank you has apositive, long-lasting effect on employee behavior. If peopleenjoy their jobs, if going to work is not a life sentence tohard labor, they are going to do a better job. Whenemployees are allowed, encouraged, or otherwise helped totake pride in their accomplishments, to appreciate the

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inevitable humor in their accomplishments, and to have anhonest appreciation for the relative importance of theirvarious tasks, they are able to work more efficiently and

more effectively.Increasing employee satisfaction. Saying thank you ispart of keeping employees satisfied with the company. Invirtually every why-I-stay-with-my-current-company survey,financial compensation (even at very high levels) rankssignificantly behind feeling appreciated. According toRethinking Rewards, an article in the Harvard BusinessReview, the primary motivations for employees are (in

decreasing significance): (a) a sense of accomplishment inperforming the work itself; (b) recognition from peers andtop management; (c) career advancement; (d) managementsupport, and, only then, (e) salary.2

A metaphor for this finding can be drawn from familylife: How many divorces have been initiated because he/shenever pays attention to me, when the offending partner thoughtthat bringing home the paycheck and being there was all thatwas needed? If nothing else, an effort to say thank you is

certain to reduce a companys employee turnover rate, withall its direct costs (for example, the expenditures forrecruitment and catch-up training) and indirect costs (forexample, the loss of experience and knowledge that thedeparting employee takes with her or him).

Other benefits. Saying thank you, however, does muchmore. It supports successful quality efforts by encouragingemployees to look for opportunities to make improve-ments. Even little improvements add up. In recent decades,progress made in the course of performance excellenceprocesses suggests that, over time, incremental improve-ments are as powerful as breakthrough improvements.Even better, incremental improvements are within the reachof every employee.


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Organizations prosper when everyone is creativelyengaged in seeking improvement. The benefits of a well-runquality process come in revenue generated, anticipated cost

reductions and measurable increases in customer satis-faction. The most compelling reason for saying thank youmay be the link between incremental improvements, sayingthank you, and the bottom line.

ITS JUST GOOD BUSINESS

A program for saying thank you and for celebrating successis the mortar that holds together the building blocks of

morale and commitment, training, and performance. Forreasons of both style and substance, any change processmust involve recognition, gratitude, and celebration. Byfocusing on incremental improvement, by providingintermediate goals, by adding an element of humannessand fun, and by strengthening the link between topmanagement and the other 90-percent-plus of the payroll,saying thank you brings the abstract concept of quality tolife. Saying thank you bridges the gap between the rational

and emotional aspects of work relationships.Precisely because saying thank you does evoke emotion,

however, the whole idea often has been viewed by hard-headed business people as a secondary issue. It is not.Finding ways to celebrate together and to conveyrecognition and gratitude by acknowledging the dignityand individuality of every employee go a long way towardensuring a companys long-term financial health. Anyone

interested in the organizations continued existence mustmake saying thank you a priorityand the responsibility tosay thank you increases as the individuals rank in theorganization increases. In short, saying thank you is good

business. And all it takes is a little forethought.

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13

3

A PhilosophicalCaution or Two

Saying thank you requires planning. It can be done

badly. You can lose ground in a number of ways: bylimiting efforts to one approach; by being insincere or

(just as damaging) by being perceived as being insincere; byhaving someone receive recognition at someone elsesexpense; by giving only generalized recognition, rather thanpointing to specific actions; by saying thank you too soon(and thus putting undue pressure on a person or a team) ortoo late (leaving people to wonder why you slept through

the original accomplishment). All of these situations can beavoided, however. While no two programs to say thank youwill be identical in their details, all well-implemented effortsshare two characteristics: They say thank you in a variety ofways, and they have a personal touch.

DID ANYONE HEAR YOUSAY THANK YOU?

Corporate programs for saying thank you are designed tosolve a perplexing problem for many leaders: determininghow to say thank you. Too often, an organization giveseveryone something that either the president of thecompany or the head of human resources likesunder theassumption that if one of those two likes it, everyone will


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(or should) like it. This approach also contains an element offairness, which executives who are comfortable with rationalscenarios find particularly appealing.

Unfortunately, not everyone hears thank you the sameway. An expression of gratitude that thrills or at leastsatisfies one person may well make someone else vaguelyuncomfortable and put a third person to sleep. Take, forexample, those ubiquitous engraved plaques presented toworthy employees (often in small, informal ceremonies).Although there is nothing inherently wrong with a plaque,its reception may be paradoxical. For example, Employee Amay spend the evening following the presentation by

polishing the plaque preparatory to hanging it above the

14 Chapter Three

Did You Say

Thank You?

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

NONO

NO

NO

NO

Can You Blame

Someone Else?

People

Happy?

Try Some

More

People

Cranky?

Try ItDid It

Work?

HurrahYou Poor

Soul

Morale

Stay High?

Lucky

No Problem

Figure 4 Thank you flowchart.


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A Philosophical Caution or Two 15

fireplace, while Employee B takes the plaque home andputs it directly into the fireplace (or, if morale in theorganization is sufficiently high, settles for putting it in the

back of a closet with a rueful shake of the head).As long as an organization stays within the restriction ofhiring human beings, this paradox is going to exist.Author/consultant Janis Allen uses the phrase, I sent youa circle but you received a square, to encapsulate thephenomenon.3 What counts is what is heard and, as withevery form of communication, different people hear thankyou in different ways.

IT DOESNT ALWAYSSOUND THE SAME

A highly individualized response to an attempt to say thankyou complicates matters, but neither is it an insurmountablehurdle nor should it come as a surprise. Once again,Abraham Maslow helps illuminate the reasons whydifferent people have different reactions to the same thing:They are at different stages of personal development andhave different needs. As a result, reactions to a particulargesture will vary not only from person to person, but overtime, the same person will have different reactions to thesame gesture as the individuals circumstances change.Even assumptions about like groups of people are risky. Twomid-level managers may look comparable on paper, but onemay drive an old car and live in a paid-for house, while theother relishes a flashy car and has large house payments.

Their records in the workplace may be identical, buttheir ideas of what constitutes a thank you are likely to bequite different.

Then, too, particularly in a country like the United Stateswhere cultural diversity is the norm, different culturesrespond in different ways to different forms of recognitionand gratitude. It is an organizations responsibility to find a


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way to thank everyone in a variety of ways; it is not theindividuals responsibility to be pleased with half-measures.

EFFECTIVE PROGRAMSREQUIRE OPTIONS

Organizations that give only one type of recognitionbe ita plaque, cash, or anything elsemay have devised a fairsystem but not necessarily an effective one. Theres a distinctpossibility that only one person in three or four will reallyfeel thanked and motivated to do more. The majority mayfeel cheated or, perhaps worse, feel nothing.

The solution? Build a program that says thank you inseveral different ways to each person, leaving it to theindividual to decide which particular thank you ismeaningful to him or her. The saying that The customerperceives service in his or her own terms can be modifiedhonestly to say, The employee perceives gratitude in his orher own terms. What is heard in the way of gratitude for a

job well done is more important than what is said. In short,if they didnt hear it, youeffectivelydidnt say it. In theworkplace, for both short- and long-term purposes, youdont really care exactly what rings a persons chimesyoudo care that everyones chimes get rung. Regularly. Or morecorrectly, whenever they deserve it.

TAKING THANK YOUS PERSONALLY

Something else holds true for every corporate program for

saying thank you: Personal involvement is a must. As withany effort to strengthen an organizations ties with itsemployees, just saying it does not make it so. LakewoodResearch published a poll in which executives andemployees were asked if they agreed or disagreed with thefollowing statement: This company genuinely cares aboutthe well-being and morale of the employees and takes

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actions to help people feel good about working here. Sixty-seven percent of the executives agreed with the statement;eighteen percent of their employees agreed.4 Lots of circles

were being sent; lots of squares were being received.Disconnects traced to faulty communications occur becauseit is not just what the managers do, it is how they do it andtheir apparent frame of mind while they do it. Consider thefollowing example concerning the use of measurement.

Imagine that Manager A were to tell Employee B to takea particular measurement every hour and to send theresults to Manager A on a weekly basis. After receivingweekly reports for a month, Manager A then descends upon

Employee B and announces, A-ha! Now I know where theproblems are! Youre making mistakes! You better fix thisright away or youre going to be in a heap of trouble. Howmuch cooperation should Manager A expect? How quicklywill the problem get fixed and how permanent a solutioncould be expected?

Now consider the same scenario. Again a month haspassed and Manager A, four weeks of reports in his hand,arrives on the scene and says, When you have time, weneed to talk. There is a problem, and since you are the oneright here on the scene, Im willing to bet that youregoing to have the best ideas on how to fix things. Whencan we get together to start working on this? The peopleare the same, the data is the same, the locations are thesame, and Manager As intent is the same. Yet this timeManager A is going to get a lot more cooperation, and thechances of a long-term solution are infinitely higher. The

difference? Attitude.

HAVING THE RIGHT ATTITUDE

Attitude is determined in large part by the emotional status,needs, and background of the managers who are sayingthank you. Some senior managers begin a program of


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saying thank you less-than-convinced that it is the bestinvestment of their time. For stated rational reasons (or foremotional reasons that they may not have articulated even

to themselves), they resist being involved with theirsubordinates in this wayeven while paying lip service tothe notion that employees deserve the companys gratitude.Not all such behavior is a rear-guard action to keeprelationships strictly rational. Some of it results fromfeelings of self-consciousness or fear of being perceivedas insincere.

SINCERITY MEANS THE WORLD

The sincerity issue crops up every time you (or anyone else,for that matter) change habits. If you have not been in thehabit of saying thank you, your initial efforts may be metwith reserve. Saying thank you requires a degree of self-confidence. How you feel about the effort colors theexchange. You have to be genuinely glad that someone else hasachieved something. Even if you are trying to establish a

bottom-line benefit, this doesnt mean that the recognition

being offered is an act of hypocrisyany more than sayingthank you to your teenager for cleaning up a room ishypocriticalas long as you keep the achievement in mind.True, by saying thank you, you no doubt increase the oddsof more pleasant surprises in the future, but that does notmake the spoken words insincere. The rational andemotional components are parallel but not interdependent.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECTIt may seem incongruous, but anyone can be trained to saythank you. Admittedly, the training sounds to the casualobserver like forcing someone to do what someone else hasdecided is a good idea, but given a minimal amount ofcooperation and good will, behavior can precede deep

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emotional commitment. In short, if discussion and studydont convince a manager (at any level) that saying thankyou is the appropriate thing to do, it is quite reasonable for

senior executives to direct the manager to do it anywayaslong as the organization provides a way to say thank you.The senior person may be quite specific about actionsrequired (for example, making it mandatory to deliver aspecific number of gift certificates in a prescribed period oftime). It is also desirable for the senior executive to keep aneye on the results and to offer encouragement andremindersas often as neededto ensure that the managerpractices the designated behavior. A company doesnt

simply get what it measures; it gets what it reinforces.When people are being thanked during someones

training period, they wont necessarily be able to tell thatthey are being thanked by a trainee, as long as the traineemakes even a modest effort. People respond to behavior, notto what is carefully hidden in the (perhaps) dark recesses ofan executives heart. In an environment in which morale isalready high, its all right for an executive to be clumsyabout saying thank you, particularly at first. Employees willapply the same rules to a leaders behavior that they feel are

being applied to their own efforts: As long as a person isfalling forward, demonstrating an effort to do the rightthing and improve, a sincere effort is acceptable. Its a solid

bet that after extending a small number of such not-quite-voluntary-on-his-or-her-part thank yous, the manager willrelax and enjoy it.

THE FIRST THANK YOUIS THE HARDEST

In organizations in which low morale and criticism are thenorm, the initial effort to make saying thank you a habit ismore problematic. Any gesture, no matter how heartfelt andpolished, may be met with initial skepticism or down-right


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hostility. It helps to have some of that self-confidence. It alsohelps if thank yous are not separate from the rest of what isgoing on in the organization. Efforts to say thank you must

be in step with both the published and practiced values ofthe company. When a disparity exists, a change in behavioron the part of executives can introduce as many problems asit solves. The only remedy is time and consistency.

LOOKING FOR A MODEL

To create coherence between what employees at all levelssee and experience requires a realistic framework for saying

thank you. To promise to be grateful for responsive externalcustomer service and then make delivering that servicedifficult by imposing senseless rules (for example, timelimits on interaction) or to insist on meeting certainstandards to gain recognition (for example, for quality)without providing the tools and training to meet thosestandards is foolish at best, destructive at worst.

So what kind of framework is necessary? Althoughthank you is not particularly complicated, its straight-

forwardness can be deceptive. Just because this concept isbased on stuff you learned as a child, it doesnt follow thatit can be done quickly or at the last moment. In fact, one ofthe major stumbling blocks on the way to a completeprogram incorporating company-wide awards, teamawards, and individual awards, is that the executiveassigned the task of design tends to put the requirementinto either the too easy pile or the too hard pile. In the former

case, the executive decides that this is a minor project thatcan be pulled together whenever he or she has an hour ortwo to spare. In the latter case, the executive avoids doinganything in the hope that the requirement will go away. In

both cases, the executive is in for a surprise. This phase isneither too easy nor too hard. It just takes time and a hint ortwo to get started.

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21

4

Thank Yous by Design

There are proven principles that can be adopted and

successful practices that can be adapted whenplanning how and when to say thank you. This

chapter concentrates on proven principles; the next threechapters, on successful practices. It may relieve the pressureto recognize that no program will be perfect at the outset. Itwont be perfect a year later, either, but it will be better.What is important is that the organization is perceivedthroughout the company as giving it its best shot.

In an excellent article in Quality Progress magazine,

5

Gene Milas identified key attitudes and behaviors neededin establishing recognition systems as well as some guide-lines for those systems:

Key attitudes and behaviors:

sincerity

fairness

appropriateness consistency

timeliness

importance


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Guidelines:

Recognition is not compensation.

There cannot be winners and losers.

Not all successes are based onquantitative measurements.

Recognition is not manipulation.

Recognition is not based on luck or fate.

Employees must contribute to therecognition strategy.

Recognition is a personal experience. Recognition is fun.

Milas guidelines are not always as self-evident as they firstappear. His bias is to let employees design and run arecognition program with management as an interested

bystander; he also has a strong preference for awardingindividuals over groups. When he speaks of recognition as

a personal experience, for example, he links achievementsto individual efforts and cautions specifically against seniormanagement presenting awards to subordinates, an eventhe feels implies some sort of caste system. Playing lord orlady bountiful should certainly be avoided. The advantagesof involving senior managers in saying thank you werespelled out in Chapter 2. Also, some people crave individualacclaim, while others feel much safer being recognized ingroups. Some corporate cultures are built on teamwork

without calling out relative merit. A mixture of approachesthat allow for flexibility may well be more effective.

The guidelines above lend themselves to a discussion ofwhat constitutes a firm foundation for a thank you program.The following commentary expands onand occasionallydiffers fromthe explanatory notes in Milas article.

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Thank Yous by Design 23

RECOGNITION ISNOT COMPENSATION

Money in some form will likely be a part of a recognitionprogrambut it pays to handle that part of the programcarefully. If you hand out too much cash, it may be treatedas a regular part of compensation and lose its impact. Atthat point, people expect similar sums to be handed outregularlydeserved or not. Gift certificates worth a modestamount solve most of these difficulties. There is little dangerof confusing them with incentives or fair payment forservices rendered. It is, of course, impossible to completely

separate the notions of saying thank you and offeringfinancial rewards. The people who are most often thankedare almost invariably those whose energy and imaginationalso earn promotions, bonuses, and so on at an acceleratedpace. Gift certificates, however, reinforce the fact that thesesums are part of a recognition program and are meant as agesture of gratitude.

THERE CANNOT BEWINNERS AND LOSERS

To be truly effective, the organizations program of sayingthank you must be available to all employees at all levelswhich implies that there is a way for every employee to

become involved in corporate efforts to improve. Of course,senior management can always decide to exclude somepositions and people from those efforts (and thus the

recognition program), but it is only fair to tell thoseexcluded exactly why their jobs have been defined asthankless tasks. The mental image of the president of theorganization approaching someone and saying somethinglike, Well, we dont think you will ever have an idea worthfollowing up, is a powerful argument for 100-percentparticipation. It is equally important that nobody wins at


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someone elses expense. Although there can (and will) becompetition against a defined standard, one persons gainshould never be at someone elses loss.

Available to all employees also means that the program isdesigned to thank middle managers. In the United States inrecent decades, too many improvement efforts tried tomake a connection between senior managers and non-managers and skipped right over the all-important peoplein between on the corporate ladder. Thank you is forhumans, not for any one specific class of humans. Besides,how can senior managers expect middle managers to saythank you to others if they dont hear it themselves?

NOT ALL SUCCESSESARE BASED ON

QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENTS

The third guideline refers to the use of quantitativemeasures. Of course, quantitative measurement comes intoplay when designing a basic schemebut it is the spirit and

not the letter of the law that you are dealing with here.Leave room for the immeasurable, such as courtesy,enthusiasm, congeniality, and effort. Above all, always erron the generous side. It is far better to spend an extra fiftydollars saying thank you to someone who doesnt trulydeserve it (the individuals peers will most likely make himor her pay) than to miss thanking someone who trulydeserves it.

RECOGNITION ISNOT MANIPULATION

Tony Rinaldo addressed the issue of manipulation in aHarvard Business Review article, Rethinking Rewards,noting that, The objective of a reward plan is not to control

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or manipulateit is to provide focus and reward improvedperformance.2 There is less likely to be a whiff of manipu-lation if a program of recognition, gratitude, and celebration

is linked to stated and practiced organizational values.Helping to inculcate the workforce with the desired beliefsand habits and encouraging desired behavior is notunethical, as long as those beliefs and habits are reinforced

by what occurs in the organization. Milas states thatrecognition has to be valid, genuine, and meaningful for therecipient and the giver.

RECOGNITION IS NOTBASED ON LUCK OR FATE

It may seem redundant to state that the best thank youprograms are not based on luck or fate. One of the majorpurposes of designing a program of recognition, gratitude,and celebration is to enable executives to know when it isappropriate to extend praise. If executives have the code,so should everyone else. Congratulations linked to achieve-ment are meaningful; congratulations out of the blueare not.

EMPLOYEES MUST CONTRIBUTETO THE RECOGNITION STRATEGY

How congratulations are to be extended should also be amatter of common knowledge. Any program worth theinvestment of time and money sets up a consistent, easily

understood, beatable system where people know how tosucceed. Employees can play a role in defining such aprogram. Milas recommends that a cross-level, cross-divisioncommittee of employees conducts a survey and makesrecommendations to the appropriate senior managementdecision maker(s).5 He feels that for a number of reasons it is


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good practice to form an employee committee to reviewrecognition criteria and policies:

It avoids anti-company or anti-management

cynicism that might occur in other approaches. It solidifies employee cooperation, since the

bestowal of recognition rests with peers rather thanmanagers. Thus potential roadblocks are avoided inthe superior-to-subordinate relationships.

It promotes quality and productivity efforts aimed atthe internal customer (other employees).

Even this approach is not foolproof. Asking people to makerational forecasts about their emotional response at somepoint in the future may be accurate on a general basis, but itis likely to be a little shaky on an individual basis. Anotherpotential problem may occur if the intent of the survey isnot explained fully at the outset. If employees think they areturning in a wish list in return for being good, a list it is thecompanys duty to fulfill (much like children giving their

Santa list to their parents), morale problems may occur.Employees Know Themselves

Taken on balance, however, employees do have a better ideaof what they can achieve and what will make them feelthankedoften to the surprise of management. BarbaraGlanz, a consultant, conducted a survey for a stategovernment agency in the Midwest and discovered that thenumber-one request by nonmanagement employees was to

spend a half-day in the state commissioners officejustwatching what was going on.6 And management is free(and wise) to add frills and flourishes to a basic program astime goes on. Variety keeps programs active and vigorous.Over time, an organization will need to vary every aspect ofthe programbut never the intent.

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GRATITUDE SHOULDBE TIMELY

It is always a good idea to make gestures of gratitude astimely as possible. Take note of accomplishmentsimmediately afterward whenever possible. This means thatleaders need to keep in touch with what is going on whilekeeping enough distance not to micromanage. Leadersmuch like effective parents or coachesdont just sit on the

sidelines, quietly observing before saying something. Theystay involved, aware of what is going on, and offerreinforcement when needed. An annual event to say thankyou has a place, but in the absence of numerous interactionsthroughout the year, an annual event will have minimalimpact, no matter how much ceremony is attached to it.

Figure 5 A personal touch can make the day.


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Thanks As a Part of Corporate Culture

If the company can make the simple act of saying thank youa natural component of the company culture, continual

improvement will follow. But this wont happenaccidentally. The example must be set by the company in itspolicies and habits, and it must be demonstrated by theactions of senior managers. Remember that employeesmirror the treatment they receive. If employees are treatedwith disdain, they will treat customers as an imposition ontheir time. If employees are treated like automatons, theywill not extend the customer-winning behavior needed forsuccess in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

RECOGNITION IS APERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Milas makes a point when he writes that individualrecognition is powerful,5 but so is the personal touchespecially the personal touch of senior management.Hearing thank you from fellow employees may be

satisfying from an egalitarian point of view, but employeeswho make a special effort deserve to have it noticed in theexecutive suite. Why not arrange for both?

In any event, a personal touch is essential. There is ahuge difference between sending employees recognitionstuff through the company mail and presenting it to them ina personal way filled with warmth and gratitude. The samepractical results are achieved in both cases: The employeegets the stuffin hand. Each case, however, results in a far dif-

ferent impact on the employees feelings about the event andthe company.

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A Personal Touch Can Make or Break the Day

In a truly rational workplace, a committee might be able todecide on gifts of various sorts and deliver them to

appropriate people in a private ceremony conducted by themail clerk. People will even have a degree of emotionalreaction to receiving such recognition orgratitude. But dontbet on it being the reaction you want. For example, at asmall liberal arts college in Massachusetts, the annualtwenty-dollar Christmas gift for staff arrived in aneveryday, interdepartmental envelope with a business cardfrom the president of the collegedespite the fact that thecollege was run by Jesuit priests and there was a printingdepartment in the building fully capable of whipping upsomething for the occasion. Holiday feelings did not cometo the fore. The department secretaries did, however, usetheir Christmas money for an occasion: In January theywent to dinner as a groupand toasted the ineptitude ofthe gesture. Personal involvement on the part of someonecould have salvaged the situation.

RECOGNITION IS FUNFinally, use your sense of humor. Dont be afraid to be silly.Make time to celebrate together. Saying thank you is fun!

The next three chapters include case studies featuringlong-term programs, short-term programs, and annual

bashesa smorgasbord of ideasand it isnt hard to spotthe element of fun in each. Setting up an effective programof recognition, gratitude, and celebration requires time,

thought, and emotional commitment and expense, but oncethings are sorted out, defined, and operating, the fun begins.


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31

5

Many Thanks, Yall!

When the UICI Insurance Center in North Richland

Hills, Texas, defined and implemented a perfor-mance excellence process in 2000, the system was

modeled in large part on an earlier effort (19841989) by thePaul Revere Insurance Group in Worcester, Massachusetts.One of the elements common to both successful processeswas a vigorous and varied program of recognition, grati-tude, and celebration.

Recognizing that different people hear thank you in

different ways, the process designers set out to make surethat every deserving person would feel thanked aftermaking a contribution to the organizations progress. Aswas true with the earlier effort at Paul Revere, every personon the payroll was on a Quality Teamand the teams wereempowered to implement ideas for improvement ofprocedures that fell into their areas of responsibility.

Saying thank you in recognition of the accomplishmentsof Quality Teams was the central and most frequent form of

gratitude extended by the company but, as will bedescribed later in this chapter, it was by no means the onlyone. Saying thank you is not only an act of leadership, it can

be contagious.The recognition scheme for Quality Teams began with a

straightforward sequence of award levels similar to popular


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sporting events: Bronze, Silver, Gold. It is a phrasinganda hierarchythat virtually everyone is familiar with.Anticipating a need for more than three levels of

accomplishment, the solution was the same as it had been atPaul Revere some years before: multiple levels of Gold.Gifts were defined for Quality Teams that reached Bronze,Silver, Gold, Double Gold, Triple Gold, and QuadrupleGold. This forecast of probable maximum results by anyone team proved to be a gross underestimate of theemployees ability to make improvements.

Before the first year was over, the recognition schemewas expanded to Quintuple Gold and Sextuple Goldand

the words Septuple, Octuple, Nontuple, and Decituple wereinvented. Over four years, the accomplishments of theteams had forced the Quality Department to define levels(see Figure 6) for up to 350 Quality Ideas implemented andcertified in one 12-month period or a lesser number of ideasthat totaled at least $1,700,000 in annualized savings.

At first look, it would appear that this recognitionschedule is very, very generous and, thus, expensive. In fact,the cost is noticeably less so than the standard incentive-laden suggestion systems found in many companies.

For instance, if a Quality Team were to implement, in a12-month period, a series of Quality Ideas with a totalfinancial impact of $1,700,000, each member of the teamwould receiveover the course of the yearapproximately$3,350 in gift certificates, meals, and gift items. For a team of10 members (the average size of a Quality Team), sayingthank you would be a $33,500 expense for the companyor

less than 2% of the more than $1.7 million in savings. Mostorganizations with suggestion/incentive programs rewardemployees with between 10% ($170,000 in this case) and25% ($425,000) in payouts.

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Many Thanks, Yall! 33

Figure 6 Award levels of UICI Insurance Center.

AWARD LEVEL IDEAS OR SAVINGS AWARDS

Bronze 10 or $10,000 One Bronze Gift

Silver 15 or $25,000 $25 Gift Check

Gold 20 or $50,000 $50 Gift Check

Double Gold 30 or $100,000 One Bronze Gift and

$50 Gift Check

Triple Gold 40 or $150,000 One Bronze Gift and $50 Gift Check

Quadruple Gold 50 or $200,000 Catered Lunch for Team and

$50 Gift Check

Quintuple Gold 60 or $250,000 Barbecue Set and $50 Gift Check

Sextuple Gold 70 or $300,000 CD Player and $50 Gift Check

Septuple Gold 80 or $350,000 Auto Emergency Kit and $50 Gift Check

Octuple Gold 90 or $400,000 Lunch with the Department Headand $50 Gift Check

Nontuple Gold 100 or $450,000 Travel Garment Bag and $50 Gift Check

Decituple Gold 110 or $500,000 Travel Cooler and $50 Gift Check

Platinum I 130 or $600,000 Wine Case, Dinner Coupons

for Two, and $100 Gift Check

Platinum II 150 or $700,000 Picnic Blanket, Dinner Coupons for Two,and $100 Gift Check

Platinum III 170 or $800,000 Sport Chair, Dinner Coupons for Two,and $100 Gift Check

Platinum IV 190 or $900,000 Carry-all Bag, Dinner Coupons for Two,

and $100 Gift Check

Diamond Plus 230 or $1,100,000 Team Trophy, Jean Shirt, $100 Hickory

Farms Certificate, and $200 Gift Check

Double Diamond 270 or $1,300,000 Team Trophy, Picnic Basket, Dinner

with Company Leaders (each member

brings one guest), and $200 Gift Check

Triple Diamond 310 or $1,500,000 Team Trophy, Jacket, $100 Omaha Steaks

Certificate, and $200 Gift Check

Quadruple Diamond 350 or $1,700,000 Team Trophy, Beach Towel,

$100 certificate to a local sporting

goods store, and $200 Gift Check


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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEENINCENTIVES AND GRATITUDE

Imagine that Mr. and Mrs. Smith decide to have a dinnerparty. Among the people they invite to the gathering isyoung Mr. Jones. Imagine too, that, besides looking his bestand being on time, Mr. Jones (perhaps because he had beentaught well by his parents) arrives on the designatedevening with a bouquet of flowers for Mrs. Smith.

The flowers are an act of gratitude, a way of saying thankyou to the Smiths for including him in the social occasion.Whether or not Mrs. Smith expected the flowers, the fact is

that they were not a requirement for entrance into the Smithhome. The flowers are a thank you.When next the Smiths are making plans, there is a good

chance that Mrs. Smith will remember that nice Mr. Jonesand invite him once againwhile forgetting Mr. Brown,who accepted a past invitation but made no effort to saythank you.

Mr. Brown might sniff and say, I didnt know flowerswere required. This misses the point. Flowers werent

required. They were never intended by Mr. Jones as a fairreturn for the food and companyand Mr. and Mrs. Smithknew that. But they certainly appreciated the gesture, theeffort to say thank you.

As mentioned earlier in this book, there are two reasonsfor a company to say thank you to its employees: the sametwo that apply with Mr. Jones and the Smiths. The first isthat the doer of good deeds deserves to be thanked,

deserves to feel thanked. If the doer of good deeds doeshear, does feel, the thank you, the odds are good that he orshe will do more ofitwhether it is issuing invitations tofuture social occasions or eliminating minutes from arepetitive process.

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THE THANK YOU CEREMONIES

It is worth describing a typical 10-minute ceremony at theInsurance Center to illustrate how the philosophy and prin-ciples in previous chapters came into play. Perhaps the mostimportant aspect was the personal touch. At the appointedtime, a group consisting of one or more senior executives(the president rarely missed one of the ceremonies the firsttwo years), members of the Quality Steering Committee,and at least three of the four members of the QualityDepartment would arrive at the work area of the QualityTeam whose accomplishments had earned them a new level

of recognition.A common opening remark was, I understand youfolks have made it to Bronze (or Silver or Gold or whatever)level. What did you do? One or more of the team membersusually leapt at the chance to brag about what the team haddoneoften pointing out one or the other of theirteammates for particular praise. Alternatively, teammatesnudged someone to the front with statements such as,Well, Chris really had the big idea for us this time. Chris,

why dont you explain it?There were at least three benefits of this exchange.

Knowing that the executives cared enough to come to theirwork area and learn about what their team had done wasall it took to convince some people that they were on theright trackand to motivate them to look for even moreways to improve things. Individual team members alsohad a chance to shine, and for many of them, theopportunity to tell senior executives face-to-face aboutwhat happened was all the thanks they needed. Lastly, theexecutives learned more about their company and howthings actually got done.


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Realistically, some members of the team wereprofoundly indifferent to this approach. The reaction ofthese people was a silent, Yeah, yeah, lets cut the chit-chat

and get to the goodies. And that is what happened next.

MIXING IT UP

Since the Insurance Center planned on saying thank youin several ways, the goodies were next. Whenever therecognition scheme (see above) called for a Bronze gift, theemployee had chosen one of a dozen or more optionsprevious to the ceremony. Each of these options cost the

company between $9 and $12, and all of them weremonogrammed with the name and logo of the companysquality/improvement process.

A caution on cash. From a companys viewpoint, giftcertificates operate as money with a memory, a particu-larly important distinction when small sums are involved.At the Insurance Center, American Express Gift Checkswere used, even though the company had to pay a charge

of $2.50 for each check purchased from a bank. Thereasoning was simple. Handing someone $25 in cash as agesture of gratitude (remember, the goal is to say thank you,not to pay fair market value for a contribution), causesan emotional buzz that lasts anywhere from seven to15 seconds. Then the cash goes into a purse or a pocket and,effectively, disappearsto be spent on gas or groceries orwhatever. If cash is a necessary option, consider using$2 bills.

A gift certificate, on the other hand, carries a built-inreminderwhether the certificate is an American ExpressGift Check (as at the Insurance Center) or a company inven-tion backed through arrangements with a selection of storesand restaurants (as at Paul Revere). Gift certificates aretaken home and shown to other family members, who willmost likely respond with something like, Gosh, whered

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you get that? The answer: Well, I work with a great bunchof folks and we did some neat stuff and the company saidthank you. In fact, the president of the company handed

this to me this afternoon.A gift certificate gives a recipient the option to purchasewhatever fits his or her needs at the time. Interestinglyenough, people dont tend to figure gift certificates into thefamily budget. Certificates are most often used to buy luxurygoods or services, things that would not normally be boughtwith real money. And when the certificates are presented forredemption, the store clerk may comment on how lucky theindividual is to have received such a gift, which in turn is

likely to elicit a favorable report on the company.Having a store clerk or a family member hear praise for

a company is a peripheral benefit; the real benefit is inhaving employees remind themselves how fortunate they areto be working for such an outstanding and generouscompany. Purchasing something with a gift certificate upsthe odds that an employee will remembereven yearslaterwhere the money came from. When employees lookat the objects theyve purchased with their gift certificates,they will remember their achievements and they are likelyto have positive feelings toward the company. Perhaps notevery time, but frequently enough to count.

Money isnt everything

For some people, the financial token will be the thank youthat they hear; for them, the reaction can be summed up as,If you give me money, I understand that you are grateful.

But there are those whose reaction is, Of course you shouldgive me moneyIm underpaid. Now, how are you goingto say thank you? Its time to try again.

Try something symbolic. For some people, a littlesomething that hangs on a wall, sits on a desk, or is worn ona garment (or is a garment of some sort) counts as a thankyou. They know that whenever someone sees their lapel pin


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legitimize and strengthen feelings of self-esteem. In short, itis nice to be told that you are doing something right andthat the company appreciates it in such a public way.

The final gesture. At some point in the ceremony at bothPaul Revere and the Insurance Center, the seniorexecutives would shake hands with each member of theteam and offer a personal thank you. For many people,that gesture had the biggest impact. Oh, they spent themoney; they used the gift; they took the publication homeor emailed the web page with their picture to their homecomputerbut what really rang their chimes, what made

them feel good all the way from the soles of their feet tothe tops of their heads, was having the senior executiveshake their hand and say, Thank you. I really appreciateyour effort.

KEEPING THE SYSTEM HONEST

During the first year of the quality processes at both PaulRevere and at the Insurance Center, the director of the

quality process encountered an interesting problem: Peoplecheated, usually in one of two ways. One manner ofcheating developed because, in both processes, the teamscounters (the running totals for the number of certifiedquality ideas and the amount of the annualized financialimpact of those ideas) were re-set to zero at the end of aquality year. As the end of the quality year approached (forPaul Revere it was December 1; for the Insurance Center, itwas September 13), some teams would accelerate theirefforts in order to reach the next level of recognition, whileother teams would stop reporting their accomplishments.Often, they would proceed with the change (after all, itmade sense and it usually made their day-to-day jobs moresatisfying), but they would not report it until the first day ofthe new quality year. As a result, instead of achieving a total


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that fell just short of earning more recognition in year X,they would begin in year X+1 with a running start. Thesecond problem was that not every member of a team

performed equally wellor at all.In the face of these infractions, the director of the qualityprocess made the same important decision in both cases.Keep the big picture in mind. The company was aiming fora generous, fair, beatable program that promoted the qualityobjectives. What counted was that every deserving personheard the thank you. If it was necessary to thank a few extrapeople or to say thank you a few extra times in order tomake sure that no deserving person was missed, so be it.

In the first case, manipulating the timing on reportingimprovements actually acted as an incentive causing theteam to look for more improvements the following year.Since the goal was, after all, continual improvement, noharm, no foul. In the second case, these were team awards

by definition. The executive making the presentation, andthe company, were seen as fair; perceived as unfair was thenonperforming team member who lined up for the gifts andvarious forms of thank you. Peers usually took care of thesituation with post-ceremony comments (after the executiveand others had left) such as, We noticed you accepted thegoodies. Does this mean that its your turn to come up withsome ideas? When peer pressure failed, the immediatemanagers and supervisors were in a position to provide anyappropriate counseling.

SURPRISES, SURPRISES, SURPRISES

People often have unexpected reactions to being thanked.At one company, the director of the quality process heardfrom two employees who completely misjudged their ownanticipated responses. The first individual, a seniorexecutive, had chosen a clock radio from a catalog (theBronze option) but wasnt very excited about it. After all, he

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had helped to define the recognition system and knew thesystem was built in part so that people who needed materialthings could get them. He just didnt need anything in the

price range covered by the catalog.The clock radio was delivered by UPS to his home. As hewas unwrapping it, one of his children came up and askedwhat was in the box and why it had come. As he began toexplain that he worked with a great bunch of people andthat his company had said thank you for their efforts, he feltchills racing up and down his spineto his ownamazement.

A few days later, a non-management employee told the

director about his personal reaction at his teams firstrecognition ceremony. He had previously made no bonesabout the fact that, while perfectly happy to take part in theimprovement efforts, he extended himself because hewanted something from the catalogand he had an eye onthe gift certificates to come. At the ceremony, he wasdelighted to learn that each team member would be pickingsomething from the appropriate catalog that day. Heexpected nothing more. When the vice president for humanresources shook his hand, looked him in the eye and said,Thank you, to his complete surprise, he felt deeplytouched.

By building a program that said thank you in severalways to each deserving employee, the company had beenable to communicate its gratitude to every employeethroughout the yearand reap the benefits of theirreactions.


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6

Yankee Ingenuityat Work

It didnt take Paul Revere long to learn that the very

assets of their long-term formula could also be itsweaknesses. Straightforward and simple have a way

of becoming dull and boring unless a little spice is addedto the recipe. Supplemental long-term programs, short-term programs, and annual events season a thank youprogram with a dash of spontaneityas long as they areplanned carefully.

QUALITY COINSTake, for instance, Quality Coins (see Figure 7). At both thePaul Revere Insurance Group and Froedtert MemorialLutheran Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, top executiveswere given Quality Coins to distribute. At Paul Revere, the

bronze-colored coins were slightly bigger than a silver dollar.On one side was the Quality Has Value logo. The other sidecarried the words GOOD FOR ONE MEAL IN THE PAUL

REVERE CAFETERIA in the center, encircled by a the wordsIN RECOGNITION OF A JOB WELL DONE. (A warning isappropriate here: No company should adopt this particularapproach unless company executives are sure that theemployees will consider a meal in their cafeteria a prize worthwinning.) The coins were given out spontaneously wheneveran executive heard of someone deserving a thank you.


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Yankee Ingenuity at Work 45

Froedterts coins were silver-colored, engraved on oneside with the legend IN RECOGNITION OF EXHIBITINGEXCELLENCE IN YOUR JOB. The other side carried

the hospital logo encircled by the words QUALITYUNDERSCORES EVERY SINGLE TASK. That phrase is thesource of the acronym QUEST, the name of Froedtertsquality process. The coins could be saved or traded in forten dollars in cash. After the first several hundred coinswere awarded during the first year of the process,Froedtert was delighted to note that barely half of the coinswere cashed in. For many of the employees, the memory of

being thanked was too precious to surrenderat least until

the occasion was repeated. Second and third coins tendedto be cashed in more regularly.

PAUL REVERES PEET PLAN

Paul Revere also started PEET (Program for Ensuring thatEveryone is Thanked), another approach for plannedspontaneity. At the beginning of each month, the topexecutives received PEET Sheets prepared by the director

of quality. Each sheet included the names of two qualityteam leaders, their work locations, and some backgroundabout each. Sometime during that month, the executivewould go to those people and talk with themaboutanything. The meeting took place, of course, on the turf ofthe junior person.

One of the best things about something like a PEETprogram is that there is no agenda, no purpose for the get-

together other than to make a connection between twohumans. If stuck for a conversational gambit, the executivecan always talk about the quality process or whatever othercompany-wide effort is taking place. What the juniorappreciates the most (seniors take note) is that each givesthe other a singular gifttime. As with the Quality Coins, if


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Paul Revere looked for other ways to make employeesfeel valued. For example, new employees were invited to

breakfast with President Aubrey Reid. And the cafeteria

made Q-shaped cookies before the Malcolm BaldrigeNational Quality Award examiners paid a visit.

RECURRING CELEBRATIONS

The Insurance Center also initiated several short-termprograms throughout each year. The trademark of theseprograms was an emphasis on improvement, high visibility,attractive recognition possibilities, and a very high return

on investment.For instance, each year a program of about two months

duration was launched in late spring just as teams werebeginning to lag a bit as folks lined up their summervacations, shifted their work schedules to accommodateout-of-school-for-the-summer children, and paused to catchtheir breaths after a productive stretch following the

beginning of a new Quality Year. These spring programscombined individual recognition with team awards and a

company-wide celebration.

The Spring Party: A Roman Holiday

One year, the programs theme was Ancient Rome. At theoutset, every Team Leader received a genuine Romancoinsurprisingly inexpensive thanks to Roman soldierswho buried thousands of bags of small coins all over Italyand Greece before they went off on a new campaign during

the Pax Romana period. When a Quality Team had its firstidea implemented and certified, every team memberreceived a genuine imitation coineven less expensive.

More important to most team members, each time ateam had an idea certified, the name of every team member


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went into a huge container for a drawing at the end of theprogram. The more ideas implemented by an individualsteam, the higher the odds that that individual would win

one of several trips being given away.In addition, the Quality Team with the most ideascertified by the end of the competition was treated to anevening on the town: dinner with spouses at a first-raterestaurant in Fort Worth and tickets to a Broadway-caliberproduction at a major venue.

On the last day of the program, an Italian lunch wasserved to all employees (complete with gelato carts withItalian ice cream and the director of the quality process

dressed in a toga). Names were drawn for the trips-for-twoweekends at an Ancient Rome-themed hotel in Las Vegas.As was true every year, most of the trip-winners weremembers of teams with a high number of completed ideas,

but there was one winner from a team that had had onlyone idea put in place.

The most productive single team had well over 125ideas implemented in a two-month period. That team alonemore than justified the cost of the two-month program.

Annual Bashes

At the Insurance Center, the Quality Department staged twomajor company-wide celebrations each year. In April, theprogram presented the Strategic Plan to the entire employee

base. In October, the program celebrated the accomplish-ments of the Quality Teams in the just-completed QualityYear. The theme for each gathering changed every year.

What follows are descriptions of one example of each.

Strategic Plan. The spring gatherings were not designed toeducate every employee in every detail of the StrategicPlan. The intent was, rather, to present an overview of the

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plan, to familiarize employees with the goals, and to assurethem that things were happening for a reason. If the QualityTeams members knew the major concerns of the company,

it was assumed that that knowledge would influencewhat improvements they worked on and support thosecompany goals.

One year, the meeting was titled The Strategic Plan: TheMusical. A gentleman within the company (who performedregularly in musical productions in a local theater and whowas capable of writing lyrics that fit well-known tunes)wrote a skit that tied together a collection of six songsonefor each of the six strategies.

A Can you sing? call went out for volunteers within thecompany. Anyone who was self-confident enough to cometo the cafeteria after hours and sing in front of a small groupof fellow employees made it into the show.

The skit revolved around a series of scenes from aregular business day at the Insurance Center. Each sceneincluded a telephone repairman. The audience was told atthe beginning of the skit that the telephone repairman wasactually a spy from another company, trying to find outwhy the Insurance Center was doing so well.

Each scene opened to employees on stage discussing abusiness matter. The telephone repairman would interruptand say he didnt understand. The executive who was thestrategy owner would then give a brief explanation of thestrategy, after which the telephone repairman would stilllook puzzled. This was the executives cue to say somethinglike, Perhaps these folks can explain it to you, and two or

three employees would burst into song accompanied by alive jazz combo.


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One song, to the tune ofMy Country Tis of Thee (ChetNiemczyk was the Chief Information Officer):

IT Technology,here's what it means to me,and Chet Niemczyk.

Build a new strategy,To build all boundaries,of the healthcare industry,and make IC rule.

Some ways to do this are,HIPAA and IVR,Endevor too.

Document managementcould use enhancements,

for that we have Imaging,it makes scanning cool.

Mainframe needs upgrades too,for processing lots of new,business and claims.

Upgrade our old PCs,with Microsoft XP,Improve our security,with IBM.

These are a few of the,improvements for IC'sTechnology.

We've got a lot to do,in two thousand and two,Here's to our new strategy,

for Technology.

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WeROQ. The fall all-employee meetings, designatedWeROQ gatherings, celebrated the accomplishments of theQuality Teams in the previous 12 months. WeROQ was a

pseudo-acronym for We Recognize Our Quality. The eventincluded awards for the teams that had been companyleaders in both quantity of ideas implemented and totalfinancial impact along with awards and recognition forindividuals who had made particularly note-worthycontributions throughout the year.

Taking advantage of the pronunciation of the meeting title(werock), the Quality Department brought in a rock band oneyear and gave t-shirts with a 1960s psychedelic design to all

employees. Many enhanced their look with long-haired wigs,bell-bottom trousers, head-bands and small, colored sun-glasses. Another year, a Super Heroes theme brought out theinner Batman and Wonder Woman in the company.

YOU CANT JUST SAY ITONCE A YEAR

As the crowning point of a year-round program of creating anenvironment in which accomplishments are acknowledged, acompany awards bash can tie a big bow on one year ofsuccesses and impart momentum to the next year. A word ofcaution about annual celebrations is in order, however. If youwere to treat a family memberof any agelike dirt on aday-to-day basis and then, once a year, threw that person aparty, what result would you expect? Especially if youregressed to your normal rotten behavior the next day? The

same thing is true about annual company awards. In context,these occasions are great and can be the highlight of the yearfor all involved. Dropped into the calendar out of the blue,they lead to awkward questions: How come they acted likewe were human yesterday and went back to their old trickstoday? Why did they decide to throw us a bone?


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DAILY RECOGNITION IS BEST

The best advice possible about saying thank you may be tomake sure that employee performance in the workplace isrecognized on a daily basis. Managers must be trained toknow the importance of performance feedback, timely praise,and informal recognition. Consultant Janis Allen uses thephrase, Value me, not just my results.3 One way to meetMs. Allens criteria is through listening downa concertedeffort to train managers at all levels to do more than just listenup to their seniors and then proclaim down the hierarchicalchain to their juniors. Listening to subordinates is a wonderful

form of recognition that acknowledges explicitly the worth ofthe junior person. If limited to a choice between anything (oreverything) in these last two chapters and listening tosubordinates, go with the latter. It is best, however, to do both.

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55

7

Thank Yous ofAll Sizes

Organizations of all sizes can find a way to say thank

you. This chapter presents several examples drawnfrom widely dissimilar organizations: some are in

service industries and others are manufacturing companies;the number of employees ranges from 14 to severalthousand. The first case study provides dramatic proof thatthank you is not a common-enough feature of business inthe United States: The Internal Revenue Service audited theorganization precisely because it heard about its recog-

nition program!

THANK YOUS DONT HAVETO BE LIKE PULLING TEETH

Dr. Mark Gjerdes Elk Grove, California, dental officereceived a reprieve from the IRS only after Gjerde was ableto prove to an IRS agent that his fairly spectacular thankyous for his staff were, in fact, wise business investments

with a proven return on investment.7 As part of hisargument, he noted that his employee turnover wasunbelievably low. In California, registered dental assistantsstay in one office an average of seven months; Dr. Gjerdesdental assistants had been with him from five to fifteenyearssaving him thousands of dollars in direct training


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costs and indirect productivity losses. He also indicated thatthis continuity was important to his patients. Four thousandof the communitys ten thousand residents were patients of

his practice.

An Unusual Approach to Thank You

To be fair to the IRS, Gjerdes approach to saying thank youto his staff of fourteen was unusual enough to meritattention: The whole office went on trips at least three timesa yeartogetherat Gjerdes expense, for the most part.These trips included summer and winter retreats and anannual continuing education trip.

For more than a dozen years, the entire office staff wentto Sun River Resort near Bend, Oregon, for a week in thesummer. Gjerde paid for the accommodations: Each staffmember got a two-bedroom, two-bath condo complete withwhirlpool bath and other amenities. Staff members could

56 Chapter Seven

Figure 8 Thank yous dont have to be like pulling teeth.


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Thank Yous of All Sizes 57

bring along as many others are they chose, whomever theyfigured they could fit in their condo. For a week, staffmembers and guests used the various options offered by the

resort: horseback riding, golf, whitewater rafting, andhiking, among others.For several years, there was also a winter trip, usually to

a different place each year. Employees were invited to bringalong spouses, and Gjerde picked up the entire tab. Makingit an all-expenses-included outing reflected the fact that theoffice sometimes picked relatively expensive sites and thatnot all employees had available cash. These week-long tripswere to places such as Hawaii, Walt Disney World, Cancun,

the Caribbean (on a cruise), and Club Med. (And, yes, theIRS certified this as a wise investment, too.)

Continuing education trips involved taking the entireoffice to annual dental society meetings, wherever theyhappened to be in the country. These trips were typicallyfour days in length. According to their employee manual,everyone was entitled to go if their productivity warrantsit. Gjerde never had to tell someone he or she couldnt go;employees were brutally honest about their own eligibility.Occasionally, one or more employees would tell him thatthey wouldnt be coming that year.

Customers Can Tell

Although Gjerdes practice had no specific program of day-to-day recognition, Gjerde reported that patients oftencommented on how often the staff said thank you to eachother and on the wonderful, supportive atmosphere that

pervaded the office. Pictures from various trips adorned thewalls of his office building, and patients often asked staffmembers about them. They also frequently asked Gjerde ifhe was hiring, and in fact, more than one former patient wason the staff.


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Gjerde depended on staff members to make inde-pendent decisionspossible in large part because they hadall been there long enough to understand each others

needs and habitsand he said thank you frequentlywhenever they did. Gjerde believed passionately in thework hard, play hard philosophy so often espoused butso rarely fully evidenced. Monthly staff meetings focusedon ways to be more efficient, to use every minute whilemaintaining a patient-friendly environment. Work smarter,not harder was not just a snappy poster on the wall; it wasa way of life. For the most part, his staff members workedfour ten-hour days per week. (Saturda

recognition, gratitude, and celebration

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