Page 51 - Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles

22 Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work

fundamentals and conditioning because doing so leads to scor-
ing baskets and winning games. Reward and recognition pro-
grams focus on scoring baskets and ignore the fundamentals,
like communication, teamwork, training, and other important
tools needed to “win” over time. Focus on improving your orga-
nization’s fundamentals, and I promise you will score more
baskets.

Reason 5: Goals Can Limit Performance
Although setting goals is an important part of any performance
management system, they should be viewed as stepping-stones
and opportunities to celebrate improvement and successes, not
as finish lines. Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University’s men’s bas-
ketball coach, authored what I consider to be the best hands-
on leadership book ever written—Leading from the HEART.
It should be required reading for every leader in your organi-
zation. Among my favorite quotes is: “I never have a goal that
involves number of wins—never. It would just tend to limit our
potential.” By their nature, goals suggest an upper limit and cre-
ate an artificial ceiling. The focus should be on working hard in
all aspects of the game—if that is the approach, you win games
as a natural consequence.

Reason 6: Inconsistent and
Unfair Administration
If you want to spark a passionate conversation at your organiza-
tion, tell supervisors that you are beginning an employee reward
and recognition program. Invariably, you will get the argument,
“Why should we reward our employees for doing their jobs? Isn’t
that why they get a paycheck?!” They have a point. Supervisors,
the usual gatekeepers of such programs, vary widely in their
beliefs about such efforts and subsequently in their support