Think big. We’d rather get out of
bed every day and try something different and have it flop
and then pick ourselves up
and try something else, as
opposed to being an organization where ideas end up on the
bulletin board, and the bulletin
board committee gathers them
and puts them in the log book,
and that’s where they die.
We do a car giveaway every
year. There came a time when
we realized that management by whip and chair was extinct,
and to retain people and
inspire them to do good
things, you have to develop a
system that rewards.
Every time you have perfect
attendance for a quarter, you get
into the lottery. At the end of the
year, we draw from the names
of all the people who have perfect attendance, and that person
has their choice of, this year, a
Cadillac Escalade for a year, a
Harley Davidson motorcycle to
keep, or we paid your living
expenses for the year.
That spurned from a lunch
conversation we had one day.
What’s the cost, and what’s the
potential if it improves people’s
performance just 10 percent?
Incentive programs should
always drive you to some result. The reward should be
exciting, and you should have
a celebration of the accomplishment. The bigger deal you
make of any incentive, the
more effective it will be.
Call-offs reduced by 75 percent over the first four quarters where we had it introduced. It’s a long shot that
you’re going to win the car, but
it’s creating a positive when
you get up in the morning and
you’re not really sick but
you’re making that decision of
whether to call off sick or not.
It really does change people’s
behavior for the better.
Prioritize people. It’s all about
where your head is at. What
happened at Enron is that
management stopped going to
work every day thinking about their customers and employees and starting going to work
thinking about ‘me’ — it’s all
about ‘me’ — this is what ‘me’
has to do.
Many leaders can accomplish
great things while being full of
themselves — self-confidence
and a little bit of arrogance are
positive traits — but when you
break that connection and
you’re not genuine anymore,
then you’re in the soup.
There’s a barrier that goes up
when someone is seen as
unapproachable as opposed to
someone who walks around
chatting with everyone they
see. It keeps it real. It keeps
you in tune with what’s happening in your company and
what’s happening with your
customers.
HOW TO REACH: First Hospitality Group Inc., (847) 299-9040 or www.fhginc.com