Issue #46
In this issue:
Word to the Whys
"...And
these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are
immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going
through..."
Changes by David Bowie
"Treat
a man as he is, he will remain so. Treat a man the way he can be and ought
to be, and he will become as he can be and should be."
Goethe
"If
you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then
you never will change the outcome."
Michael
Jordan
"If
we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves."
Thomas Alva Edison
"People,
even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed,
and redeemed; never throw out anyone."
Audrey
Hepburn
"The
individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our
society."
Peter
F. Drucker
"Inventories
can be managed, but people must be led."
H.
Ross Perot
"The
key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."
Kenneth
Blanchard, PhD
"It
takes a big man to cry. It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man."
Jack Handey - Author of Deep Thoughts
See
Eric in Action!
Click
for a video preview of Eric's
dynamic, insightful presentation style.
Links of Note...
The answers are just a few clicks away...
Getting
Them to Give a Damn: How to Get Your Front Line to Care About Your Bottom
Line
the
new book by Eric Chester reveals the management techniques that
leading-edge employers are using to get these quirky, book-smart, and
streetwise employees—Eric calls them 'kidployees'—to contribute
in innovative and entrepreneurial ways.
Available now. Order your copy today! -more-
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Move the Middle and Transform Your Business
Through her first eight years of school, my daughter Whitney’s attendance and punctuality was an issue that always created a challenge for my wife and I. She was bright and performed fairly well academically, but no amount of prodding, pleading, and punishing we or her teachers did worked to get her to go to class on time on a regular basis. There always seemed to be a last minute panic that made her tardy, or worse, some type of minor health issue or emotional drama that caused her to miss school all together. Even though she’d gotten through middle school without much difficulty, we knew her lackadaisical attitude toward punctuality would deeply affect her performance in high school.
Whitney agreed that she needed a change, so we enrolled her into a much stricter and academically challenging school system. Four years later, she graduated with a perfect grade point average of 4.0 and a college scholarship. Throughout her entire high school career, she never missed a single day and had only two tardy marks on her record. What’s more remarkable is that we never had to encourage her to go to class or to be on time, and we never ever had to remind her about doing homework. Whitney became totally self-motivated, and in the process, she developed a work ethic that has her now excelling as an Economics major at Seattle Pacific University.
We’d love to take credit, but the fact of the matter is, Whitney’s parents had very little to do with her seemingly miraculous turn around. Instead of punishing students for poor attendance and grades, the high school Whitney attended incentivized students to perform well. Students who maintained perfect attendance (and, just as in the real world, they made no distinction between an excused and an unexcused absence) could opt out of taking two comprehensive semester finals of their choosing. Further, students who had a 92% average in all classes going in to final exam week could opt out of another two finals. In this system, Whitney took 100% ownership for her education and she took great delight in rarely having to take a final exam to keep her 4.0. She set her sights on the prize and earned the rewards that came with being a top student.
Like the majority of schools in America, most managers work overtime trying to create effective systems to discipline poor attendance, appearance, and performance, hoping to correct the behavior of their underperforming kidployees before it leads to costly turnover. But experience shows us that it would be far less taxing—and far more effective—to pave the path to the desired outcomes of issues like attendance, appearance, and performance with incentives for getting it right.
Please don’t confuse what I am going to suggest here with other types of recognition and rewards programs generally reserved for star performers who go above and beyond. I’m describing a way to get that average kidployee, who is capable of above average work, to see that it’s in his/her best interests to do more than the minimum daily requirement.
What if, in addition to “writing-up” a kid who doesn’t show up in the proper attire, a manager gave a .25 per hour bonus for everyone who did not have a dress code infraction reported for the past 30 days?
What if, rather than docking a kidployees paycheck for not having his cash drawer balance, employees who balanced each day of the week were given one hour of comp pay, at the end of the week?
What if, instead of losing your cool with that kid who consistently showed up for work late, kidployees with perfect attendance received a voucher to opt out of one nasty chore (sweeping the parking lot, cleaning the bathroom, etc.) in favor of another task?
I’m not suggesting that discipline doesn’t have its place, or that the best of the best shouldn’t be recognized and rewarded, I’m just pointing out that your life-blood resides with those kidployees in the middle. They are the critical mass. They touch the most customers. They handle the majority of the transactions. They do the lions-share of the work.
Change the norm and you change the culture. The new culture will drive the behavior of the critical mass. Reward the good, and the bad stands apart and alone. Move the middle and the newly recognized (and raised) standard of behavior becomes the catalyst for conformity.
Take Away Idea for Whys Managers
Today’s
Generation Why kidployees care about nothing more than “fitting in”
and being accepted by their peers. Dangle the prize that motivates them
for doing just that before trying to make them a star in your organization.
Make it cool to meet the standards and you’ll go along way toward
getting them to give a damn about doing even more.
I TAWT I
TAW A PUTTY KAT: Three young men coming home from dinner in the mountains
above Boulder, Colo., saw an injured animal in the road. They stopped
and picked it up, deciding to take it to a veterinarian. "It looked
up as if to say, 'Help me'," said Jason Lee Laird, 21, who decided
the animal was a lynx or a bobcat. The cat filled the entire back of the
Jeep they were driving, and on the way down the hill they spotted a sheriff's
deputy and flagged him down. The deputy was shocked to find a 65-lb. mountain
lion cub in the Jeep and called in the Dept. of Wildlife to take care
of it. Then Deputy Jeff Canton turned to another matter: he told Laird
he smelled marijuana. Laird offered that perhaps that was the smell of
mountain lion urine -- maybe the cat peed in the Jeep? "Mountain
lions don't smoke marijuana," Canton replied, and cited Laird for
drug possession. (Boulder Daily Camera)
“Even for medicinal purposes?”
GIVE ME LIBERTY,
OR GIVE ME SCHOOL: Joshua Phelps, a 17-year-old senior at Pine Bush High
School in Crawford, N.Y., was looking for an extracurricular activity
to participate in to round out his college application when he spotted
an ad for the school's Civil War Club. He signed up and spent a weekend
in a mock battle against Confederate soldiers in a replay of the 1863
Battle of Chancellorsville. Back at school, a security guard noticed something
in Phelps' car: a militia uniform, complete with a (gasp!) fake musket.
The guard called police, who arrested Phelps on weapons charges. In addition
to criminal charges, the school suspended Phelps for five days pending
an expulsion hearing for violation of its zero tolerance weapons policy.
(Middletown Times Herald-Record)
“… if we could just figure out a
way to get students to take an active interest in their education. Hmmmm….”
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