Incentive Intelligence

How Visualizing the Current Economic Woes Can Affect Your Incentive Program

Everyone is aware (I hope) that the current economic situation is tough.  As a country, we’re in debt.  We continue to deficient spend.  And we don’t really have any good answers on where to get more money or where to cut our current spending. 

Maybe I should rephrase, we can’t “agree” on where to get more money or where to cut.  We all have our opinions.

But this isn’t a political post – it’s about numbers and how we perceive them in our brains and how that might just affect your next incentive program.

First... Let’s Start With the Economy

The numbers are big.  Very big.  And we don’t do well with big numbers.  Our human brains were designed to work with much smaller issues – how many people in my tribe, how many saber tooth tigers are chasing me... that kind of stuff.  There’s even something called the Dunbar number that says we can’t effectively handle more than roughly 150 personal relationships.  We don’t do BIG numbers well.

Our economic situation is similar...

The federal government will take in $2.173 trillion in 2011 and spend $3.818 trillion.  We will take in $1.645 trillion less than we spend.  And we owe $14.2 trillion already.

Big numbers.

What does that look like in numbers we can all understand ... simple.  Divide by 100,000,000 (as if we could understand that math either...that’s ONE HUNDRED MILLION!) and you get

• A family that is spending $38,200 per year.
• Their income is $21,700 per year.
• The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. 
• The family already owes $142,000 on their credit cards.
• After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated.
• So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Starts to make a little more impact.  Nothing changed but the number of zeros.

Our Brains Need Smaller... but not too small

Blame it on evolution or the public school system but we don’t handle the big (and the very small BTW) well. 

And your incentive program may be plagued with the same problem.

Telling a sales person to sell $100,000 more by year-end may not have the same effect as showing them how making 4 more calls this week will result in one more sale.  Those are numbers we can deal with.  Those make sense.

Any incentive that is 12 months long and includes large numbers (read: goals) may not be as impactful as a shorter-term program with smaller goals (even if the sum of all that is the same.)

Work with the brain – work with your people to create programs that fit the way we think and behave.

Or... just keep putting goals out there that they ignore anyway – hoping someone they don’t know calls and orders one big humongous number of widgets so they can get the trip to Hawaii.

 

 

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Saying Thanks On Memorial Day Will Take Over a Month To Complete

I thought it might be interesting to put Memorial Day into some context.  If you were to spend 8 hours each day to say thank you out loud for each of the casualties American has suffered in all the wars from the Civil War (when the first observance of Memorial Day was held by freed African Americans for Union soldiers) through today - it would take you 45 days to complete the task.

Since 1865 we have lost over 1.2 Million Americans in war.

In order to complete the task in 8 hours today, Memorial Day, you would have to say “Thank You” 43 times per second.  Try it.  

 

 

 

#HRevolution - Pre-Test? Channeling Jerry Maguire...

I predict seismic activity in and around Atlanta on April 29, 2011.  That's when HRevolution 2011, HRE3, HRevolution Tres - will be a-happenin'.  

This is my third time at #HRevolution -  a "learning, laughing and linking" conference.  I shudder to even call it a conference.  It is more like a mash up of say... The Hangover and a Science Channel documentary (without the tiger and without Morgan Freeman.)  Still major cool though.

I'm leading a session called - Designing for Influence.  

The main idea behind this track to help HR professionals learn some of the tools they have available for influencing behavior in their organization.  After all, HR is continually tasked with guiding behavior in the organization through recognition strategies and communications efforts targeting all employees.  

I want to help you do that more effectively and more efficiently.

But First ... I need you to help me help you.

If you're going to HRevolution I'm asking for input.  

HRevolution was built on the concept of the audience driving the conversation.  This is a meeting about you and your needs.  I want to be sure I do that right.  

So ... below is a short, 5-question, survey that will help me get my head around what it is you want to get out of the 90 minutes we have together.  

Feel free to add anything in the final text box... remember - this is YOUR session... I'm just priveldged to be allowed to be in the room with the cool kids.

(If the form doesn't show up in your RSS feed or your email subscription - try the post on the web site here.   If that still doesn't work - try this link... somethin's gotta work no?)

 

Thnanks!  I'll see you at HRevolution 2011.

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• Supporting the #HRevolution and Other Activities of Note (i2i-align.com)

Charlie Sheen, Data Visualization and Incentive Programs

Okay, maybe adding Charlie Sheen to the headline was a bit of SEO, but in reality, it does have a bearing on this post.

I’ve been doing this incentive and reward stuff for a while and a huge hole in the process for most clients is measuring program effectiveness and measuring what is going on in their incentives applications.

Don’t get me wrong – most incentive companies measure/track sales, apply reward calculations and spit back the points earned and redeemed.  They can tell you how many ipods were redeemed and they can tell you how long their customer service hold time was.  They can tell you average earnings by person/division/group if you gave them that information.  And that’s nice.

But that’s really a report on THEIR business... not a report on YOUR business.  

How often do you get reporting from your incentive and reward company that truly affects how you might structure the program?  Not often is my guess.  Yet doesn’t your incentive company have the data that could provide you better information about your business?  They know each person in the program (should probably know where they work, live, and potentially if they are male/female.)  They might know who they report too (if you’ve given them an overall feed of employees from HR or in the case of a distributor program, from accounting.)  The amount of data an incentive company may have on your target audience could be astounding.  But only if you’re asking about it and looking for it.

Charlie Sheen – Top Performer

I bring this up because of a post I saw today on a blog I follow from a company called “Juice Analytics.”  They took data on the pay of TV stars in different genres, networks, etc. and created a very interesting visual representation of that data.  It’s not too important for this discussion what that data is (although it is interesting) – but what is important is that once the data is turned into a visual – it provides some interesting viewing.  I’ve embedded the video below (feed readers and email subscribers may have to click through to see the video.)

 

 

Imagine The Discussion...

What if... and this is a what if... you could take this same approach with your performance metrics?  Would you make different decisions based on it?  Probably.  Think about how you might want to review sales performance...

• Average by gender (like the video)
• Average by channel (in our case it could be distributors, jobbers, dealers, VARs, etc.)
• Median by channel and gender? (I like medians more than averages – a better representation of what is really going on IMHO.)
• By Product 
• By Time

Since more programs simply spit out the “normal” stuff – you can only design your programs for “normal” stuff, making it boring.  But if you could see your performance information in a different light – it might spark some interesting discussions such as...

• If females are redeeming more than males is your award mix skewed?
• Are certain areas of the country selling more of Product A but not earning awards?  Is there a communication problem?
• Do you see any movement in the bubbles when you jump from product to product?  Are some people excelling in one area?  Can we leverage their expertise in training others?
• Did rewards increase during a specific period?  Why?  

In other words – you could create data charts that show you where you may be missing performance stars that don’t show up on your “average reports.”

Make It Interesting

Charlie Sheen may be a nut ball (although up until this week a very highly paid one – and that is a post of different color) but he is interesting.  And being interesting is getting him a lot of attention right now.

Now imagine if you could make your data more interesting (and deeper – c’mon – stop settling for “average” reports from your incentive company – you’re not spending “average” amounts of money on your programs are you?)  And if you could make your data interesting would you pay more attention to it?  Would you use it more?  Would you do different things if you could see information in three or four dimensions versus numbers in an excel spreadsheet or in an Excel-generated pie chart?  Probably. 

Make the data interesting and you might make some interesting changes in your incentive and reward programs.

 

This Thursday Night All Your Motivation Belong To Us

One of the things I look forward to each week is the Thursday night blogtalkradio show #HRhappyhour hosted by Steve Boese (@steveboese) and Shauna Moerke (@hr_minion.)  Unfortunately – this week they made the big mistake of inviting me to be on the show.  Trying to keep me in check is the fabulous Trish McFarlane (@TrishMcfarlane) from HR Ringleader who drew the short straw and will be the guest host (with me trying to keep up.)  I’m guessing Steve and Shauna wanted to be as far away from this train wreck as possible (because of me not Trish - she'll be the only thing saving it!.)

What Will It Be Like?

Hell, I don’t know.  In doing a bit of show prep this past week I spent about an hour or so on the phone with Trish trying to hash out the show outline and I think we probably hit on about 134 different things – from incentives, to rewards, to social psychology to how to raise children to when to punish vs. when to reward.  

The topic of how to engage, influence, motivate, reward, recognize and drive employee behavior is a big, wide topic.  I’ve spent 20+ years working on it and I still learn a lot every day.  Some of that may just come through on Thursday night.

What I Think We Will Touch On...

What I think we’ll end up talking about is...

• What is motivation and can HR do anything about it?
• What can HR do to do “engagement” better?
• Is it really HR’s problem?
• How should a company run incentives and rewards programs?
• What are most businesses getting right?  Getting wrong?
• Where does Paul spend his vacations (what’s a vacation?)

But more importantly...

Listen to Previous Shows

What Do You Want To Know?

Anyone who’s ever met me knows I don’t have a problem talking about things I’m passionate about.  But I’d like to hear what you all think?  Given the fact that I spend my time and energy on employee “motivation” – what questions do you have?

Hit me in the comments or send me a note via email (link at top of site too) or hit me on twitter @IncentIntel.  Let me know what’s bugging you.  What would you like to know?  I’m pretty good at the whole engagement and motivation thing but if you have a question on anything hit me – I’ve stayed at a Holiday Inn before so I’m sure I’ll have some input.

So... put it in your calendar – Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 8:00 pm EST.  Link to the radio show site is here.  Link to the the blog site is here.

Listen in via your computer or call in via the phone 646-378-1086.

Here’s to a great #HRhappyhour!

The Drinking Lamp Is Lit!

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Saying Thank You to Our Military

I have been around the military since birth.  

I wrote last Veterans Day about my connection to the military through my father, my father-in-law, brother, grandparents.  I also have met some amazing people in the last few years through social media that were in the military – Wally Bock, Josh Letourneau, Joe Gerstandt, Lisa Rosenthal, Tammy Colson (I'm sure there are others.)  I've worked with some (Dave Breedlove) – and studied in college with some (the guy who fought in Viet Nam and always wore the army jacket and had coffee with me in the student union every day in college.)

Military folks always make me feel inadequate.

• I've never held a gun let alone used one.
• I've never left my home to move in with 20 strangers, crawl in the mud and train in a strange town with no real family to speak of to support me.
• I've never donned a bullet-proof vest to do my job each day.
• I've never had to cover my ears as bombs and explosives went off around me.
• I've never had to think about not coming home from work.
• I've never thought that what I did each day actually impacted over 350 million US citizens – and most of the 6 billion people in the world.
• I've never chosen a direction that was less about me and more about everyone else.
• I've never had to know that other people’s lives depended on me doing my job right.
• I've never had to depend on the person next to me for my life.

While I may feel inadequate around these folks... I also feel very lucky. 

I’m lucky because I live in a country where people like Wally, Josh, Joe, my Dad and my brother – take that responsibility on themselves.

Thank you.

To each of you - and to everyone who has served and is serving our nation, and me - Thank you.

UPDATE:

@houshold6diva started a linky for those that are writing about Veterans Day - check her post (link to the linky at the bottom of her post - or here if you already  know what do to:  link to veterans day linky  )

An Incentive Company Story – A Cautionary Tale About Differentiation And How You Can Avoid Anonymity…

(For those of you with ADD or those that just don’t like good bedtime stories, jump right to the bottom of this post for a link to a free whitepaper on differentiation in the incentive industry.  Free money-wise, we do ask for a little info before you get the download.)

 

It was a dark and stormy night...

As I tucked my kids into bed the other night they asked me for a story, as kids will do hoping for 10 more minutes of awake time before the lights go out and the cell door slams shut (what.. you don’t lock your kids in at night?)  Being the dutiful father I acquiesced.  I settled them down, pulled the covers up tight and tied down the corners, like every night, and started the story.  I warned them – it was a scary story.

Foo Fighters "The Pretender"

“Once upon a time there was an industry called the ‘incentive industry.’  It was a grand industry.  An industry full of creative, quirky, weird folks.  It was a profitable industry.  It provided a great, if a bit stealthy, service to many companies, helping them drive sales.  We designed creative and individual programs developed by crazy marketing folks and sold by crazy sales folks.  Each company had their own warehouse full to the rafters with merchandise.  Each company painstakingly picked their own merchandise awards, had a photo studio for taking pictures of that merchandise and a creative department that designed company-specific merchandise catalogs and bespoke communications programs.  Heck kids, some years they’d spend a million dollars just on the look and feel of that catalog.  

But merchandise was only a part of the wonder of our industry.  We also did travel awards too kids.  We were explorers like Columbus, Magellan, Dora.  We opened up China.  We took top performers to Russia.  Individually, incentive companies planned and worked with local indigenous peoples to provide new and exciting travel experiences that could never be purchased elsewhere.  We opened up the world.

I believe this in my heart kids – if it weren’t for incentive travel that wall in Berlin would never have come down.

Each company spent years of time and many dollars being different and unique in the industry.  They worked hard to be better and different.  And they had extremely well-paid sales people carry that message to the clients.  In those days the industry had half the revenue and twice the sales people.  

Think of that kids…twice the number of people talking to clients.  

 Those were the days my kids.  That was an industry.”

As I told that story to my kids I was awash in nostalgia.  I remembered the emotion of that time.  It was the Jets and the Sharks.  Client loyalty was strong and each company had a personality and point of view.  Some were corporate.  Some were creative.  Some were all numbers and some were all art.  

It was the best of times.  And had I known it then – it was the end of times.

“Why are you crying Dad?”

 ...my youngest asked as I started to leave the room and pull the cell door closed.

“Well, son.  You see that isn’t the way it is now.  Most companies outsource their merchandise, use a third-party for award cards and rely too heavily on DMCs for their travel design.  Creativity is in the tank and frankly – a client can pretty much throw a dart at a list of incentive companies and get the same price, service and design.  There just isn’t a difference.”  

I shook my head and started out of the room thinking and repeating over and over…

“There just isn’t a difference, there just isn’t a difference.”

I saw the horror in my child’s eye when I said that.  And at that moment I knew I had to do something about it.  I could help make a difference myself.  

It is still about difference!  

It is still about the people and creativity!

But how I thought, how?

 

Enter Starr Tincup and I2I

That was a rather long intro to my main point today (sorry ad copy writers I know I should get to the point in the first 10 words but my audience is much more sophisticated.)

Starr Tincup is a full-service marketing agency for companies in specialized market segments. They build brands by telling the truth.  They promise an unyielding pursuit of the truth as they work to discover the mysteries of your idiosyncratic buyers. They enhance your position in the market.  

And we’re working with them for the good of the incentive industry.  

We announced our joint effort in this press release at the Motivation Show and yesterday an email went out linking to a short whitepaper on differentiation.  

I urge you to download now.  

Go.  

Download.  

Learn how you can reverse this terrible plague of commoditization.

Ask yourself – am I better off today than I was 20 years ago?  Or even 10?  I think if you look in the mirror you’ll know we’re right.  

You’ll know that the old way of engaging clients and marketing your difference has changed.  And your approach needs to change as well.

Download the whitepaper.  Call us.  Call Starr Tincup.  Make a difference.  

If you don't do if for yourself - think of the kids - do it for them.

 

Related articles

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Failure and #HRReinvention

It's Monday.  I'm not into it just yet.

I've a lot on my mind.  Client projects.  Personal projects.  Friends who tell me my site sucks (you know who... all I'll say is KS.)

But the big thing weighing on me is HRReinvention.  

I am so stoked but also a bit scared.  Scared good not scared bad.  

HRReinvention takes place this week on Thursday in Omaha (first time there for me btw) - it is the brain-child of Jason Lauritsen who writes at Practicing HR and is the VP of HR for a large Nebraska bank.  Actually it was spawned when Jason went to HRevolution 2010 (so that makes it the brain-second cousin or something like that.)

Jason has pulled together some great people to come and talk with some other great people.  This will be epic - and hence my bit of anxiety.  I mean I'm up there with:

Jason Seiden - China Gorman - William Tincup - Joe Gerdstandt - Greg Harris - Chris Bryant - Dr. Roger Fransecky - Dr. Kim Hoogeveen.  Whoa ... great company.  

Check their bios here...

 

So what am I doing there?  Well...

My topic will be Legen... wait for it.... dary

(in my mind anyway)  

It is...

Zen and Art of Human Maintenance – HR’s New Bible

To borrow from the document I sent to Jason explaining what I would cover...

In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author suggests that a combination of logic and emotion – rational and romantic – the being in the moment (zen) and the step-by-step nature of maintaining a motorcycle should coexist in order to have a higher quality of life.  HR needs to look at their function in a similar fashion – the processes, laws, rules and organizational elements PLUS the emotional, illogical and often messy world of humans as people.  

Neat huh.... and also why I'm a bit worried.  But no guts no glory.

To reinforce how important it is to take the chance of failing I'm channeling @seiden and offer you this video (email subscribers click through here to see it.)  Credit where credit is due - I found it through Barry Ritholtz site: The Big Picture.

 

 

 

Four Dead In Ohio… Social Proof and What You DON'T Say Has Impact

While many of us will read that headline and dredge up the line from the song Ohio by CSN&Y – I bring it up in reference to four teen suicides in Mentor, Ohio.  All four were students at the same school and all four deaths were linked to bullying.  (Background here - AP story on Yahoo.)  We're not talking about the bullying you and I probably experienced - read the article - it was bad.

I bring it up not to make light of it but to highlight how the forces at work here can have big impact and big results.  The issues I saw as I read the article were two-fold…

1. It is a statistical quirk that suicides run in clusters.  Dr. Cialdini attributed it to the fact that when suicide is reported it triggers a form of social proof – “If they did it – I can do it.  Other people feel like I do and they did this.”
2. For the most part – only the victims of the bullying and those that committed suicide were named in the article.  No mention of those that may have been contributors to the bullying.

I am not saying bullying caused the suicides (a good discussion on this is here.)

I am saying that there are two things that we should keep in mind when it comes to how our organizations view behavior and how your organization may react to those behaviors.

 

Too Much Focus on What Goes Wrong

If your ongoing communication focuses on the things people are doing wrong it will seem that there are more people doing the wrong things than doing the right things.  Even a small amount of press focused on ongoing problems gives the impression that there is more bad than good.  

Like suicides – bad news can begat bad news.  Be careful how “transparent” you are and how much you air your dirty laundry.  It is important to address deficiencies but it isn’t required that every issue be heralded and put in lights.  Handle it like you’d handle a family problem – with the appropriate people and the appropriate discretion.

 

Not Enough Focus on the Bad Behavior

Don’t hide those that really cause truly bad problems and don’t hide the consequences of unacceptable behavior.  This may seem in direct conflict to the previous statement.  However, the impact to the group in Ohio would have been much different had the press coverage been more about the people and the unacceptable behavior of bullying than about those that took their lives.  

We’ve all seen people leave companies for “new opportunities” with nice severance packages – but knew in our hearts they cheated on expenses reports or harassed employees.

It’s the difference between a story that says:  “These four teens commit suicide due to bullying” and a story that says “These teens, through bullying, contributed to the death of four others.”

Which of those two statements is closer to what we want to really communicate?

 

Personal Rant Now… Nothing about business…

As I read the articles on the suicides I kept saying to myself – “Who did this and why are they not being dragged into the open?”  

I know why – there are many reasons – legal, ethical, etc.  But in this situation, as long as the perpetrators can hide behind that veil – the real issue – the social UNACEPTABILITY of bullying - also stays behind that veil.

I understand that in the case of the students we have a privacy issue for those under 18.  But as long as names are withheld – there is no consequence.  

Here’s a thought – for other issues it has been established that parents are responsible for the actions of dependent children - why not apply that same standard here?  

The parents of the bullies need to be outed.

If you are a parent – do you know if your kid is a bully?  What if you knew your name would be in the paper because your child was a party to bullying?  Would that change your point of view on bullying?  Would that change your reaction from one of “kids will be kids” to addressing the issue with your children?  Have you talked to your children about bullying?  Do you know if your kid is a bully?

Shouldn't we have as much transparency around those that cause the problem as we do about those that feel the effects of it?  

I would hope my children never face the kind of abuse that these four souls endured.  And I would also hope that my children never participate in, or through non-intervention, condone this type of activity.  I will have that conversation – again – because we’ve had it in the past.  I hope you too take the time to have a conversation with your child about bullying as well.

There is no reason for bullying.  There is no reason for anyone in their teens to suffer the indignities these kids suffered.  

This is a tragedy and that tragedy should be named.  Yes, the deaths are tragic.  But the bigger tragedy is that those that are truly responsible are hidden from our view - and hidden from negative opinion and social condemnation.

That is how we create real social proof… That bullying is unacceptable behavior.  

 

Motivation Show - October 12, 2010 - Video Recap

Okay - be kind - I'm experimenting...

Below is the video I made after the first day of "education" at the 2010 Motivation Show.  The real "show" starts tomorrow with all the booths, barkers and bad swag.  I presented today on social media in incentive programs for the Incentive Research Foundation education summit.  

Tomorrow I'll be walking the floor looking for stuff to video, people to interview and getting ready to present again at my own breakout - "Responding to the Assault on Incentives."  I'll upload some video from that tomorrow (fingers crossed...)

Til then - enjoy the amateur effort below...