Employees Recognition Quotes

A boss wants to pay for results, an employee wants recognition for effort. If a boss recognizes effort, they will get even better results.

Gallup found that the key drivers of productivity for employees include whether they feel cared for by a supervisor or someone at work; whether they have received recognition or praise during the past seven days; and whether someone at work regularly encourages their development. Put another way, the ability to communicate consistently positive energy lies at the heart of effective management.

Of the twelve, the most powerful questions (to employees, guaging their satisfaction with their employers) are those witha combination of the strongest links to the most business outcomes (to include profitability). Armed with this perspective, we now know that the following six ar ethe most powerful questions: 1) Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? 3) Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? 4) In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? 5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? 6) Is there someone at work who encourages my development? As a manager, if you want to know what you should do to build a strong and productive workplace, securing 5s to these six questions would be an excellent place to start.

Employees respect a boss who knows the difference between the mundane and the exceptional. Remember that not all employees respond well to incentive bonuses or a dangled carrot of any kind. They seek recognition, not bribery. 7.

Homo Sapiens are Exploitable. Large Corporations Base the Mass with Least Recognition. It does NOT have to be the Employee Himself that would Deteriorate the Corporations Intranet but Surely since his Least Recognized, He is Most Definitely Vulnerable, Its a Starting Point to Open a Door for a Lovely Challenging Maze filled with Seed of Corruption that in Stages the Artists Shall Paint their Mark.

At work, foreboding joy often shows up in more subtle and pernicious ways. It shows up by making us hesitant to celebrate victories, for two primary reasons. The first is that we’re afraid if we celebrate with our team, or have a moment where we just breathe, we’re inviting disaster and something will go wrong. You can likely identify with that feeling of getting a project up and out the door and then refusing to celebrate it with high-fives because you think, We can’t celebrate right now because we don’t know if it’s going to be perfect, we don’t know if it’s going to work, we don’t know if the site will stay up… The second way foreboding joy shows up at work is withholding recognition. We don’t want our employees to get too excited because there’s still so much work to be done. We don’t want them to take their foot off the gas, to get complacent. So we don’t celebrate achievements. We think we’ll do it someday, but these same factors persist in the wake of joy. This is how foreboding joy shows up at the office, and it is a costly mistake.

Moments of pride commemorate people’s achievements. We feel our chest puff out and our chin lift. 2. There are three practical principles we can use to create more moments of pride: (1) Recognize others; (2) Multiply meaningful milestones; (3) Practice courage. The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves. 3. We dramatically underinvest in recognition. • Researcher Wiley: 80% of supervisors say they frequently express appreciation, while less than 20% of employees agree. 4. Effective recognition is personal, not programmatic. (“ Employee of the Month” doesn’t cut it.) • Risinger at Eli Lilly used “tailored rewards” (e.g., Bose headphones) to show his team: I saw what you did and I appreciate it. 5. Recognition is characterized by a disjunction: A small investment of effort yields a huge reward for the recipient. • Kira Sloop, the middle school student, had her life changed by a music teacher who told her that her voice was beautiful. 6. To create moments of pride for ourselves, we should multiply meaningful milestones—reframing a long journey so that it features many “finish lines.” • The author Kamb planned ways to “level up”—for instance “Learn how to play ‘Concerning Hobbits’ from The Fellowship of the Ring”—toward his long-term goal of mastering the fiddle.

Personal notes are particularly effective, especially if they emphasize being a role model, treating people well, and living the organization’s values. Doug Conant, a former CEO of Campbell Soup, is well aware of the power of personal recognition. During his tenure as president and CEO, he sent more than 30,000 handwritten notes of thanks to employees.

In retaining employees and keeping them engaged, we’ll cover the five activities of great (vs. good) managers: • Help people play to their strengths. • Don’t demotivate; dehassle. • Set clear expectations and give employees a clear line of sight. • Give recognition and show appreciation. • Hire fewer people, but pay them more (frontline employees, not top leaders!).

Measuring the strength of a workplace can be simplified to twelve questions. These twelve questions don’t capture everything you may want to know about your workplace, but they do capture the most information and the most important information. They measure the core elements needed to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees. Here they are: Do I know what is expected of me at work? Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work? Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? Is there someone at work who encourages my development? At work, do my opinions seem to count? Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important? Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work? Do I have a best friend at work? In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress? This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow? These twelve questions are the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of a workplace.

Globoforce worked with Cisco to use recognition to boost employee engagement by 5 percent, and with Intuit to achieve and sustain a double-digit increase in employee engagement over a large employee base that spans six countries. Hershey’s recognition approach helped increase employee satisfaction by 11 percent. And for LinkedIn, retention rates are nearly 10 percentage points higher for new hires who are recognized four or more times. Whether we’re leading a group or a member of the team, whether we’re working in a formal or informal recognition program, it is our responsibility to say to the people who work alongside us: “We’ve got to stop and celebrate one another and our victories, no matter how small. Yes, there’s more work to be done, and things could go sideways in an hour, but that will never take away from the fact that we need to celebrate an accomplishment right now.

The single biggest structural problem facing leaders of meetings is the tendency to throw every type of issue that needs to be discussed into the same meeting, like a bad stew with too many random ingredients. Desperate to minimize wasted time, leaders decide that they will have one big staff meeting, either once a week or every other week. They sit down in a room for two or three or four hours and hash everything out—sales strategies, expense policies, potential mergers, employee recognition programs, budgets, and branding—so that everyone can get back to their “real work.

He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer’s benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office.

Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that belonged on such an expedition. His actual ad ran like this: “Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” The only people who applied for the job were those who read the ad and thought it sounded great. They loved insurmountable odds. The only people who applied for the job were survivors. Shackleton hired only people who believed what he believed. Their ability to survive was guaranteed. When employees belong, they will guarantee your success. And they won’t be working hard and looking for innovative solutions for you, they will be doing it for themselves.

In 2009, Kahneman and Klein took the unusual step of coauthoring a paper in which they laid out their views and sought common ground. And they found it. Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform. The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. In golf or chess, a ball or piece is moved according to rules and within defined boundaries, a consequence is quickly apparent, and similar challenges occur repeatedly. Drive a golf ball, and it either goes too far or not far enough; it slices, hooks, or flies straight. The player observes what happened, attempts to correct the error, tries again, and repeats for years. That is the very definition of deliberate practice, the type identified with both the ten-thousand-hours rule and the rush to early specialization in technical training. The learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better. Kahneman was focused on the flip side of kind learning environments; Hogarth called them “wicked.” In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. Hogarth noted a famous New York City physician renowned for his skill as a diagnostician. The man’s particular specialty was typhoid fever, and he examined patients for it by feeling around their tongues with his hands. Again and again, his testing yielded a positive diagnosis before the patient displayed a single symptom. And over and over, his diagnosis turned out to be correct. As another physician later pointed out, “He was a more productive carrier, using only his hands, than Typhoid Mary.” Repetitive success, it turned out, taught him the worst possible lesson. Few learning environments are that wicked, but it doesn’t take much to throw experienced pros off course. Expert firefighters, when faced with a new situation, like a fire in a skyscraper, can find themselves suddenly deprived of the intuition formed in years of house fires, and prone to poor decisions. With a change of the status quo, chess masters too can find that the skill they took years to build is suddenly obsolete.

Jack’s secret is not just to reward people for their profit contribution in the “great game of business.” It’s to put real numbers right in workers’ faces so they make better decisions every minute, every day, for every customer. I would go one step further, and maybe Jack already has. I would give employees a minor share in the overall company, but I would also then use software to measure each individual’s or team’s contributions after fair overhead allocations and direct costs. This would mean the back-line “servers” have fair revenue recognition of their efforts on behalf of the front-line “browsers” who actually serve the end customers. Is this not possible in a light-speed world of software and business metrics? We need more real business leaders and visionaries like Jack Stack, not BS Wall Street leverage artists or old-line corporate managers who merely streamline their top-down management systems while their workers wait for their unfunded retirement and death. And we need real educators, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, who can make science understandable to everyday people. Most of all, we need people to love what they do so much that they won’t even think of retiring at age 63 or 65 or even 75. They’re so productive and happy that they don’t worry about a retirement that doesn’t make sense to them anymore, though it’s there if they have health challenges. They’re too busy satisfying their customers and creating new businesses to contemplate life without that fulfillment. They’re so focused on what they do that they’re like the champion basketball player who’s totally “in state” and one with his process. They’re certainly not bored or waiting to retire and do nothing!

His ambition was for the company to be the employer of choice wherever it had facilities. He had personally trained Kaye Jorgensen, a personnel clerk who went on to become senior vice president of human resources, with that goal in mind. As a result, the company was on the cutting edge of workplace management practices from flexible schedules and job sharing to occupational health services to the employee recognition programs it was known for to regular employee attitude surveys intended to “ensure the work day is the best part of their day,” as Jorgensen put it.

One of the crucial documents for the Ordine dei Medici, it turned out, was an Italian passport. Until then nobody had bothered to mention this potentially insurmountable obstacle. It happened I did have a right to citizenship, but since it would be bestowed on me automatically by my Italian husband (Italian husbands are less powerful nowadays), the passport logically hung on Italian recognition of our American marriage, which was in turn predicated on Italian recognition of my husband’s American divorce from a prior marriage. The divorce certification, based on various Byzantine legal fictions, was a long time coming. One time there was a false sighting of his Italian divorce, and I optimistically went down to the Anagrafe or Central Registry to see whether I could get my citizenship papers. At the end of the forty-five-minute line a small man with slicked-down hair took my documents with a yawn and disappeared into the dark forest of files. When the clerk emerged, the bored look was gone from his face. He invited me to follow him along the long bank of teller windows, he on his side me on mine, and then pass through a little gate to the employee side. He sat me down, then paced between piled-up dossiers for a minute, no grille window to screen him off, before speaking. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said kindly, “You have applied for Italian citizenship on the grounds of being married to a certain Andrea Di Vecchia.” I admitted that was true. He paced a little more, lit a cigarette. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said again, even more gently, and I should have caught on from the way he repeated it. “I must tell you something. This Mr. Di Vecchia—he is already married to another woman!” His hand was already out to give a comforting squeeze to my shoulder, but it dropped when I laughed and explained that the problem was red tape, not bigamy. I thought later, high drama must be rare behind the certificate window, and he had risen to its call. How many American file clerks would have been so ready for their unexpected moment of glory? Another problem involved my residence papers, a crucial component in any pile of documents. All residents in Italy must communicate changes of address to the State within three months, and when we left my mother-in-law’s for our own place eight months earlier we had duly registered the move. But when I went to pick up an identity document I was told it couldn’t be issued because I was still listed at my old address. I slyly told the clerk in the cage to hold on, scurried over from his Identity Card window to the Certificate window three paces away, had the printer spit out a Residence Certificate bearing my name and the new address, and carried it back in triumph. He wasn’t impressed. “Oh, that certificate. That’s from the computer, it’s not worth anything. Your address has been changed in the computer, but the computerized part of the system doesn’t count.

Learning, self-imbibing and disseminating the fact that every person & department is inter- dependent towards achieving the goals set by the organisation would go a long way to avoid conflicts in any organisation. People management is more of an art than a science. Inculcating a sense of belonging to the organisation and setting goals would be the best motivational tool apart from other motivational factors that generally revolve around such as training sessions, work recognition, bonuses etc. That apart whether one's work is recognised or not, a star invariably shine's through the darkness. Thereby good leaders need to self introspect and pave a way for unity within the team towards achieving the goals of the organisation.

Recognition of hard work matters, especially when it comes to retaining talent. A decades-long study of two hundred thousand managers and employees conducted by OC Tanner found that 79 percent of people who leave their jobs cite “lack of appreciation” as a primary reason.

Feedback followed by recognition and appreciation helps team members feel valued & understand that they are vital parts of the company.

We measured transformational leadership using survey questions adapted from Rafferty and Griffin (2004):1 My leader or manager: (Vision) ​–​Has a clear understanding of where we are going. ​–​Has a clear sense of where he/she wants our team to be in five years. ​–​Has a clear idea of where the organization is going. (Inspirational communication) ​–​Says things that make employees proud to be a part of this organization. ​–​Says positive things about the work unit. ​–​Encourages people to see changing environments as situations full of opportunities. (Intellectual stimulation) ​–​Challenges me to think about old problems in new ways. ​–​Has ideas that have forced me to rethink some things that I have never questioned before. ​–​Has challenged me to rethink some of my basic assumptions about my work. (Supportive leadership) ​–​Considers my personal feelings before acting. ​–​Behaves in a manner which is thoughtful of my personal needs. ​–​Sees that the interests of employees are given due consideration. (Personal recognition) ​–​Commends me when I do a better than average job. ​–​Acknowledges improvement in my quality of work. ​–​Personally compliments me when I do outstanding work.

managers don’t seem to be aware of this. In a related study, Amabile asked 669 managers to rank five different factors affecting employee morale: support for making progress, recognition for good work, monetary incentives, interpersonal support, and clear goals. Only 5 percent ranked support for making progress first, and most ranked it dead last.

Recognition is powerful, as long as it’s authentic and specific. Whatever their level on the inverted pyramid, employees wants to feel needed and valued.

At first, Mahalo garnered significant attention and traffic. At its high point, 14.1 million users worldwide visited the site monthly.[lxxxix] But over time, users began to lose interest. Although the payout of the bounties were variable, somehow users did not find the monetary rewards enticing enough. But as Mahalo struggled to retain users, another Q&A site began to boom. Quora, launched in 2010 by two former Facebook employees, quickly grew in popularity. Unlike Mahalo, Quora did not offer a single cent to anyone answering user questions. Why, then, have users stayed highly engaged with Quora, but not with Mahalo, despite its variable monetary rewards? In Mahalo’s case, executives assumed that paying users would drive repeat engagement with the site. After all, people like money, right? Unfortunately, Mahalo had an incomplete understanding of its users’ drivers. Ultimately, the company found that people did not want to use a Q&A site to make money. If the trigger was a desire for monetary rewards, the user was better off spending their time earning an hourly wage. And if the payouts were meant to take the form of a game, like a slot machine, then the rewards came far too infrequently and were too small to matter. However, Quora demonstrated that social rewards and the variable reinforcement of recognition from peers proved to be much more frequent and salient motivators. Quora instituted an upvoting system that reports user satisfaction with answers and provides a steady stream of social feedback. Quora’s social rewards have proven more attractive than Mahalo’s monetary rewards. Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behavior.

A learning organization starts with a recognition that all of us want to grow and to help others grow. Yet in many organizations, employees are taught and professionals do the teaching. Why not let people do both?

We’ve found that trusting people to do the right thing generally results in them doing the right thing. Allowing people to reward one another facilitates a culture of recognition and service, and is a way to show employees that they should be thinking like owners rather than serfs.

Values are the measuring stick for how you make decisions in business: goal setting, employee conduct, recognition, discipline—everything.

This is an economic issue as well as an emotional one: In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies, 40% of workers cited “lack of recognition” as a key reason for leaving a job. This

Media City, Dubai, UAE – Kazema Portable Toilets, one of the leading suppliers of plastic portable toilets, GRP portable toilets and sinks, and other portable sanitation equipment today, this week excitedly announced they have been named a finalist for their entry into the “RSA Customer Focus of the Year Award’ at the Gulf Capital SME Awards 2017. With all portable products being made from high quality, durable materials that can withstand the demands of sanitation, Kazema Portable Toilets carries a wide variety of ancillary products and accessories designed to assist business owners in earning more. Now in its 6th year as a regarded small to mid-sized business recognition awards ceremony, the SME Awards proudly identify startups, innovative SMES with exemplary products and services, SMEs which invest in their employees’ environment and customer strategy, and also the visionary entrepreneurs at the helm. “We’ve created a portable solution that is compatible with any business looking to add depth, expansion, and productivity to their operation,” said Raj, Founder and Owner of Kazema Portable Toilets. “We provide our clients with professional support worldwide that enables them to supply clients locally with our product, as well as harness it for widespread exportation.” Recognized for their high-stock, ready-to-use durable product today, Kazema Portable Toilets is one of the front-runners for their SME awards category. Kazema beat out hundreds in the category to be regarded as a finalist for their entrepreneurial solution to a problem every person encounters daily. “We are passionate about our work here at Kazema Portable Toilets, and we are honored to be named a finalist in such a reputable competition,” said Raj. “We want to thank SME for the recognition, and look forward to winning our category.

According to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, a company’s purpose should answer the question, “Why do we exist?” Kelly adds, “We exist to connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel.”6 Only storytelling can rally passionate people around a common purpose. Each week Kelly gives a “shout out”—public praise—to employees who have gone above and beyond to show great customer service. Each month the Southwest Spirit magazine features the story of an employee who has gone above and beyond. Southwest highlights positive behaviors through a variety of recognition programs and awards. Finally, internal corporate videos are filled with real examples and stories to help employees visualize what each step of the purpose looks and feels like.

30% more of the workforce is satisfied when there’s even an informal recognition program in place. 75% of employees receiving at least monthly recognition (even if informal) are satisfied with their job. 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.

Years ago, I worked in an organization that had a neat way of instilling the act of recognition in their culture. They created these cards that any employee could use to recognize another for just doing good work. They were black and white and very basic, but were accessible to everyone to use. I was impressed by how much people used them. The most impacting part was how much pride the recipients had when they received the cards. They would post them on their cubicle walls. It was a symbol of accomplishment and pride in the work that they did together every day.

Nonetheless, research shows that employees will not recall recognition if they are not recognized every seven days.

I would argue that a leader must first know what motivates each of their team members before he/she can set out to recognize them. This is because not all forms of recognition are effective for or desired by every person.

In a 2016 study, Gallup looked at employee recognition and found that the most memorable recognition comes most often from an employee’s manager (28 percent), followed by a high-level leader or CEO (24 percent), the manager’s manager (12 percent), a customer (10 percent) and peers (9 percent).

When I refer to crowdsourcing recognition, I mean that organizations should plan to include and embrace a multi-tiered approach to recognize employees. By planning and opening up the recognition pipeline, organizations take the pressure off managers to do all of the heavy lifting. While an employee’s manager is still the most important recognition source from whom employees should receive recognition, hearing praise from others outside of that employee-manager relationship can be the difference between an employee feeling valued or not feeling valued at all.

The study also recommended that employees receive some form of formal recognition every seven days.

Coworker Recognition Over the years, I have found that coworker recognition is a great way to fill the potential gaps that exist in the first two levels of recognition. What processes do you have in place to help all coworkers recognize when they see the good deeds of others? TINYpulse, an employee feedback, recognition, and performance management software company, created Cheers for Peers, a coworker recognition module. Ketti Salemme, the company’s former senior communications manager, told me that they “realized that managers don’t see all the things employees do. When other employees send recognition, it goes miles. The cool thing is that managers can see what others are seeing and can mention it so that their work does not go unnoticed.

Do you have a recognition and rewards system in place that allows you to immediately applaud top performers? How can you create scoring systems that immediately reward employees for the behaviors you want? Have you seen evidence of “gamification” in your workplace? Perhaps it’s worth reading one of Gabe Zichermann’s blog posts and discussing it with your management team.

Q01. I know what is expected of me at work. Q02. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. Q03. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. Q04. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. Q05. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person. Q06. There is someone at work who encourages my development. Q07. At work, my opinions seem to count. Q08. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important. Q09. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work. Q10. I have a best friend at work. Q11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress. Q12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

HR can and should serve as advisors to organizational leadership to develop strategic workforce plans that link to the organization’s strategic plan to ensure that the right people are on board so that the firm can meet its objectives and fulfill its mission. HR partners with line management to provide development opportunities to maximize the potential of each and every employee. HR advises management on total rewards programs (compensation and benefits) and rewards and recognition programs designed to minimize costly employee turnover and to maximize employee engagement and retention.

In a letter, she wrote that nursing would need to remain a profession of quiet and unthanked service, not an endeavor where employees would expect accolades or public recognition.

In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies, 40% of workers cited “lack of recognition” as a key reason for leaving a job.

Recognition is largely about behavior. “Catch them doing what you want and recognize it,” the books say. Appreciation, conversely, focuses on performance plus the employee’s value as a person. Recognition is about improving performance and focuses on what is good for the company. Appreciation emphasizes what is good for the company and good for the person (which may sometimes mean helping them find a position that is better for them than their current role). The relational direction of recognition is top-down, coming from leadership.

Employees need recognition for what they do

After all, people are people. Many become friends with their coworkers. Many have worked with their coworkers at previous companies.

So how do you help your Band-Aid solution stand out with people who don’t know they’re cut? You cut them! Of course, I’m not suggesting you cause any physical harm to your customers. Rather, you should adopt an approach that clearly conveys the problem you solve in advance of communicating the way you solve it. For example, back at my third start-up, when positioning our new-age feedback, coaching, and recognition solution, we could have invoked statements like: “We help employees get the feedback they need to perform their best and grow their careers.” “We help managers become great coaches.” “We help promote your amazing culture by making winning behaviors visible.” All imply that employees don’t get enough feedback at work, managers can often be poor coaches, and your people do amazing things that not everyone sees: fair points and all problems there is value in addressing. But they are also statements that are easy to dismiss. After all, many organizations already feel they provide their employees with sufficient levels of the feedback, coaching, and recognition they crave. We found prospects were much more responsive to our pitch when we preceded those statements with messages like: “Seventy percent of people leave their company because of a poor relationship with their manager.” “Most millennial employees use the word ‘hate’ to describe how they feel about performance reviews.” “Four out of ten employees are actively disengaged at work and cost companies millions in lost productivity.” Why did this approach work so well? The messages were striking. They were laden with specific and compelling statistics. And they invoked real business pains. They made the customer realize that they were already experiencing a loss. In other words, they were bleeding and in need of a Band-Aid.

My leader or manager: (Vision) ​–​Has a clear understanding of where we are going. ​–​Has a clear sense of where he/she wants our team to be in five years. ​–​Has a clear idea of where the organization is going. (Inspirational communication) ​–​Says things that make employees proud to be a part of this organization. ​–​Says positive things about the work unit. ​–​Encourages people to see changing environments as situations full of opportunities. (Intellectual stimulation) ​–​Challenges me to think about old problems in new ways. ​–​Has ideas that have forced me to rethink some things that I have never questioned before. ​–​Has challenged me to rethink some of my basic assumptions about my work. (Supportive leadership) ​–​Considers my personal feelings before acting. ​–​Behaves in a manner which is thoughtful of my personal needs. ​–​Sees that the interests of employees are given due consideration. (Personal recognition) ​–​Commends me when I do a better than average job. ​–​Acknowledges improvement in my quality of work. ​–​Personally compliments me when I do outstanding work.

One of his first moves was to open the books to the managers. Up to that point, only a handful of them had known the company’s actual profitability. When the others looked at the numbers, they were shocked. They had thought the business was making a lot more money than it was. Murdock pressed them to ask basic questions about where O.C. Tanner was going. He brought fifty-three people together from all over the company and challenged them to define what business they were really in, what value they should be offering customers, and what changes they would have to make for the company to be the best at what it did. Out of the discussions came a consensus that O.C. Tanner had to transform itself from a service-award manufacturer into a company that helped customers set up and operate employee recognition programs. It was a major change in perspective, and it required the company to make a series of seven “strategic bets,” as Murdock called them: (1) embrace reality; (2) define the strategy; (3) get the right people in place; (4) get marketing into the company; (5) harness technology first; (6) change the culture; and (7) improve operations.