Local Isn't Place-Based

A recent article on Business Week Online was about appreciation and employee loyalty and the resulting customer loyalty.

The article talked about Oprah Winfrey's favorite things, one of which is appreciation.

"Winfrey said that while material things are nice, the greatest gift you can give a person is to communicate how you feel about them."

The article then goes on to say that good managers communicate their appreciation to their employees and that ...

According to a Maritz Research poll of 1,300 full-time employees released in October, 2007, managers who are honest, caring, and generous do the best job in motivating employees to deliver great customer service and thereby increase customer loyalty. Researchers call this manager the 'caring mentor.' "

Nice words... and common sense.  I'm glad we have a survey to prove it and new buzzword to put into manager job descriptions.

But I digress.  My point of this post is to highlight a very important piece of information within the article concerning recognition in our new Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, etc., world.

"...In an interview for Training magazine, Freakonomics coauthor Stephen Dubner explained why it's also important to let others know you value a particular employee. "Consider what I sometimes call 'local fame.' Very few of us want to be (or will ever be) truly famous. What we want is to be famous 'locally,' if even for a short time—that is, known well among our peers, families, friends, etc., for having done something well and noteworthy."

What wasn't said but I believe was implied is that local isn't a place as much as it is a space. 

Local on myspace could encompass the world.  Local on Linkedin could encompass an industry.  Local isn't local anymore.

Local is now my network.  But what is local in a network - 1 or 2 degrees?  I don't know how far you need to go out into the network before you're not local. 

I do know this - recognition requires an audience - typically an audience of our respected peers - and that audience is more and more an electronic audience that doesn't occupy any physical space.

One of the first posts ever on this blog said a very similar thing and I commented on this when I was a member of the Incentive Industry Roundtable back in July of 2007.

"...You were saying, is it going to be different for this group, are we going to have to find different ways to motivate these people or recognize them or get some sort of behavior? I don't think that the baseline ever changes. What manifests itself at the end of the pipe might…Maybe part of the reward process is that it automatically sends a posting out to their MySpace account so that all of their network is linked in. Is that any different than having a stand-up recognition event? Because in their world, that is their network."

Is the new age of recognition going to have to include feeds to employee and other audience social networks?  Will we have to get permission at the program onset to post to their "wall" on Facebook?

I'm thinking yes. 

Is this important or not? 

Comments

[Jaime @ Fitzgerald Analytics]

Interesting post! You are correct to point out that in this era, our teammates spend less and less space in traditional "community spaces" (e.g. Main Street, a town square, or the barber shop) and spend more time interacting with peers via online communities. If you want to compliment them on a job well done, new methods may become necessary.

Happy Holidays,

Jaime @ Fitzgerald Analytics