Roy in India - Thoughts from a first time business visitor to India

This post has nothing to do with Employee Recognition, but I thought folks will be interested in the content.
I recently had one of my colleagues, Roy Saunderson, visit India (Bangalore) for a few days for a client assignment. Roy is what you would call a classic conservative westerner – he lives in a small town - Windsor, Canada (near Toronto), with very little direct exposure outside of the developed world. Post his 4 day visit, I asked him to pen down a few thoughts of his first visit to India. Here is what he came up with (unedited) – Do note that Roy stayed at a Taj Hotel and his only visits outside the hotel was to UB City. So these comments are based on short drives between MG Road and UB City in Bangalore, and his experiences at the airports.
1) The extent of military and reserve people as your airport security
2) Stray dogs on street and reading about children being attacked
3) More traditional culture where men are the main providers... even in beauty stores!
4) The pushing survival of the fittest behaviour when exiting plane
5) Realization of what people are paid in service status
6) The concept of low regard for life because of population size that would impact things like safety and life and death
7) Security for entering hotels and realizing the reasons why
8) Driving through chaos (thanks for driving Jayanth) and viewing the total weaving and honking to get anywhere
9) Having bombings in Mumbai while there but hardly anyone talking about it the next day
10) Late arrival and start time for meetings
11) Unclear body language (oscillating head) and not sure how to read words and actions in a business meeting

Zappos - Featured on Real Recognition Radio

Zappos has become legendary for the way they treat employees and focus on keeping their work-place truly unique, exciting and a little weird in a positive way. On their website, they state that their biggest asset is their "Culture". Check out our Radio show featuring Zappos's leader of the Cruise Ship Operations Department within Human Resources, Jamie Naughton. The interview begins with why a HR sub-function at Zappos is called Cruise Ship operations and goes on to focus on why culture is so important to Zappos and what business value they derive from creating and maintaining such a unique Culture. This is a radio show you don't want to miss - Click the link below to hear the radio show - Enjoy: Real Recognition Radio Show featuring Zappos

What's Recognition Education in Companies got to do with Sex Education in Schools?

Whenever I have had the opportunity to meet with a CEO or someone in the executive leadership team of a company, I have asked the question “What do you want to achieve with Recognition?” Every single response has been the same - “I want to build a strong Recognition culture in our company, where every employee feels appreciated for the contributions he or she is making, however small the contributions may be”. Of course, the words used and the phrasing of the response varies, but the essence has always been the same.

So how do you go about creating a strong Recognition culture within an organization?

It needs to begin with Recognition Education – i.e. managers across the organization need to understand what real Recognition is and understand why Recognition is almost a fundamental expectation of the employees who work for them. This is very different from Recognition Training, which is about using the Recognition Programs (i.e. Tools) available to managers. As my colleague, Roy Saunderson, says – “Think of it as Sex education in schools – what kids need is Sex Education, and not Sex Training”. In companies, what managers need is Recognition Education. If they are educated, using the tools will come naturally to them.

The Google approach to Recognition Program Design

While designing Recognition programs for clients, we have found that clients get really surprised with the simplicity of the program design that we recommend. “Isn’t that too simple a program?” is a common question they ask. They probably are thinking “Did we pay these guys to design such a simple program for us?”

I call this is the Google approach to Recognition. When it comes to search engines, why is Google so popular. I believe it is because of the simplicity for the user – the interface is clean, uncluttered and simple. The results are relevant to the search and are displayed in an easy to understand manner. Essentially, they make the product very simple to use, although the back-end may be very complex.

When it comes to Recognition Programs, the primary focus for me would be to design something that the employees in the organization (the end users) will actually use extensively. If you create too many programs, offer too many award options, make them input too much data, it will confuse the end-users and make it cumbersome for them to use the system. While on the other end, if they can nominate/recognize someone very easily, the chances they would use the system more are higher.

We have repeatedly seen that as companies evolve with their Recognition programs, the programs get simpler and simpler on the front end, with all the complexity (budgets, nomination/approval rules, award fulfillment etc.) moving to the back-end. So for those in the initial stages of designing and implementing a recognition program, you might as well jump ahead and create a program that is simple and very usable for the employees.

Recognition for Very Small Enterprises

I had a great conversation with a lawyer recently. She runs a small law firm, sees value in recognizing her employees and wanted my thoughts on whether they need an online system for running a recognition program.

I asked her a few quick questions:

Q1) How many employees do you have, how many offices do you have and what is the profile of the employees?

A1) Half a dozen people managers, about 30 employees, all of them located in one office in one city. All employees are law graduates. The managers being in the mid 30s, with most other employees in the mid 20s.

Q2) Do you currently do any Recognition?

A2) Two years ago, we tried doing "Thank You" cards, and gave out a few awards during the monthly team meetings. But nothing beyond that. Currently, we do something really rarely.

Q3) Why do you want to do Recognition?

A3) Because all the 3 employees who left the firm in the last 6 months mentioned that they did not feel appreciated enough here.

Based on her responses to these 3 questions, I quickly told her my analysis of the situation.

"With the little information you have given me, the solution to your problem is not designing and rolling out a Recognition program. The Recognition program is just another tool for managers to use and build a trusting & strong relationship with their people. If the trust is not there, the tool will not work"

Her strong reaction was that "We have a lot of trust in our work-place. That can't be an issue".

"If that is the case, why did the employees who left tell you that they didn't feel appreciated? Do you really believe that giving them a few monthly awards would have made them feel appreciated?"

After a few more arguments along the same lines, I told her that the problem may not be with the manager's intent, but with the lack of effort on their part to build this trust.

She quickly asked me what she could do to create this strong & trusting manager-employee relationship. I told her to have my colleague S Max Brown, come in and deliver a 90 minute Real Leadership keynote to all her employees during the next monthly meeting.

"Once your people are sensitized to the fact around why people need appreciation and recognition, figuring out ways to do this will be easy. Given that you have one office with about 30 employees, you could then create a nice physical "Employee Wall" for folks to put up thank-you notes, communicate notable work that employees do, post appreciative emails from clients etc. You could also leverage one of your monthly meetings every quarter to give out a few simple awards. A monthly award for such a small group may make the awards frivolous. These simple tools should do the trick for you".