The First Thing You Need To Know – Where Are You? – zappos Knows – Part III of III

The 3rd (and final) in the 3-Part Post (Part I and Part II) on zappos and their reward and recognition practices.

My conversation from the very generous Jamie Naughton, “Cruise Ship Captain” at zappos morphed from a single post to this three-part behemoth.  Normally I pride myself on being able to condense complex ideas down to a pretty cogent 500 word post.  I thought I could do the same with my fairly brief chat with Jamie (just a smidge over 45 minutes) but I was wrong.  

Just as I was wrong about my feeling that they had more incentives than most would think.  They don’t.  They have much more on the recognition front than the incentive.  In truth, Jamie could only remember one that I referenced in my last post.

So where do you as a reader, employee engagement practitioner, incentive and reward professional (or anyone, including my family who reads this blog out of a misguided sense of loyalty) go from here?  

How can you use this information within your company?

It’s About Where You Start

I think my bottom line learning after my conversation with Jamie is that it’s not about what zappos does.  Or what your nearest competitor does or what ACME Rocket-Powered Skates does.  None of that really matters.  What matters is where you are on the “culture” scale with your company.  What matters is what “fits” with your company.

Look at the chart below.

If you have a strong culture you can probably get away with almost 100% of your efforts focused on recognition versus incentives to manage, maintain and grow business.  zappos, by virtue of their focus on the 10 core values has a titanium culture – it’s in everything.  They don’t need to use incentives as often or to the degree most of us do.  They have an employee population so dialed into what is the social norm of zappos it’s not a matter of getting people to do things – it’s a matter of keeping up with the things they do.  

However, if you’ve got a very toxic or poor culture you going to have to resort to using incentives most of the time in order to get something done.  In the middle, well you probably can get by with a split.

Baby Steps, Bob – Baby Steps

While I know that there will always be companies that are in the far left part of the chart I’d like to think most leaders would like to be on the far right.  But how do you get there?

Simple – start where you are and begin dialing the incentive down and the recognition up.  You can’t do it all at once.  Like the movie “What About Bob” with Bill Murray – it takes baby steps.  

Take a look at your mix of incentive versus recognition.  Does it seem out of whack?  If so you probably have a poor culture (or if you don’t it will soon be – too much reliance on incentives creates it IMHO.)

Assess your culture – do you have one?  Do you want one?  Can you find a culture that is YOU?  If so you can then begin to reinforce behaviors through recognition that exemplify the culture you want.  Over time this becomes the social norm for your company and the backbone for your culture.

Creating incentives now and then to guide specific, short-term behavior is fine.  Just don’t make it your primary tool for reinforcing behavior.

Bespoke Programs

When I started this series of posts I said I was “adjusting my fit” – what I meant by that is in the past I would have argued fairly strongly that every company needs incentives and you can’t reach your objectives as an organization without them.  

I don’t believe that any more.  

I will make allowances for companies that CAN be successful without them.

I’m adjusting my position to now say that each company falls somewhere on a continuum between Glengarry Glenn Ross and zappos.  

Each company will have a different mix of incentives versus recognition.  

There is no perfect “one size fits all” recommendation.  There may be a company that can grow and be successful without any incentive programs (zappos may be as close as we get.) I have to allow for that possibility now.  

When developing a strategy to influence behaviors within an organization there is no off-the-shelf solution.  

Each company is different and each company requires a bespoke program.  That's how you ensure the perfect fit.