52-Week Employee Recognition Plan - Week 9: Be Their Student

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan . This is the 9th week of that plan. The lesson this week is:

Be their student.

This may be the easiest and least expensive step to recognize your employees.

This may be the step that generates the highest ROI, Return on Investment.

This may be the step that sustains your organization through a period of disruption, innovation, chaos, fear and...opportunities.

Paradoxically it seems to be the most difficult step to take once much less repeatedly.

Employees* have the most knowledge. You taught them their skills, rules, policies and procedures. Sure.

And then your employees test and confirm, or test and change, or tested and refine all you taught them.

How? They execute all you have taught them in the delivery of their brand promise with all of your shared stakeholders: each other, customers, partners, vendors and shareholders.

Their work forms a lab to confirm the hypothesis of your teaching. Their daily lab sessions, aka work, serve to confirm or change or refine based on feedback from all of your stakeholders. And they teach and help each other every day, every hour. Their day depends on their collaborating with each other both in doing their job and teaching each other better, faster, easier skills, techniques, keyboard shortcuts, rules and policies.

And now they have the most knowledge. It’s a combination of what you gave them to start and what they, by their commitment, have gained.

And now instead of your solutions coming from one person, you, it now comes from everyone. Everyone joins the learning process, the daily lab sessions, that confirm your hypotheses about your purpose, your strengths, your value, your stakeholders.

Being their student, letting them now teach you, helps you see further possibilities based on their reality. If Isaac Newton can stand on the shoulders of others, then surely you can stand on the shoulders of those whose work positions you to see further. Don’t worry. They’ll return the favor when they apply your next lessons in their daily lab and try to see where you’re coming from.

This is how you sustain your ability to grow in the face of ever-changing markets, technologies, business models, competitors....That teaching creates a culture of learning in your organization as Gary Harpst talked about with me. That culture of learning is what sustains your ability to rise to the next greater challenge. Your reward for success is a greater challenge.

Be their student. Keep the learning alive and growing. Take turns standing on each other’s shoulders so you can continue to see, learn and sustain your organization.

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You can start with any week of the 52-Week Employee Recognition Plan and make that your first week.

You can take one of those weeks and turn it into a month or commit to an accelerated pace and complete 6 of the weeks in one month.

You can create your own week of employee recognition. Share that journey here. Share it in your blog or Twitter or Facebook.

But do something to recognize your employees! They set your brand apart as your ultimate competitive edge. And the more you recognize their achievements, the more achievements you'll see and they'll enjoy, along with your customers and and shareholders, partners and vendors.

* Employees. I like this term less and less. Form and function, sound and meaning....don't combine for a pleasant experience when I use it. It sounds more and more patronizing, even condescending as I use it weekly.

But it's a commonly used term. And I'm stuck with it for this series of posts. Maybe in the book, I'll change the term. That's part of this process: learning.

Do you have a better term? Comrades...no. Associates, maybe. Colleagues, possibly.