A major part of the zero defects concept is to recognize outstanding performance on the part of employees by presenting them with an award. After all, you asked for zero defects performance, so let people know when you get it.
Recognition can be a tricky business. Done right, it’s full of benefits. The employee feels good, you feel good, and everyone knows what your performance standard is (zero defects), and what happens if that standard is met. Don’t you feel good for the Olympic medal winners?
Do it wrong and you will have a disaster on your hands.
Recognition is a funny thing. I can’t tell you the number of plant managers, general managers, and CEOs I’ve talked with throughout the years who reject the idea of awards for employees. How could they object? It seems that they are worried that after an award is presented, the person could do something wrong or bad and that would reflect on the award and thus them. You’d think they were going to name the building after the employee. Michael Phelps won five gold medals, then got caught smoking funny cigarettes. That doesn’t look good, but he’s still the fastest swimmer in the world. If you follow a few simple rules, the award will stand even if a recipient doesn’t.
Will Rogers said, “It’s better to deserve honors and to not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
If you present an award to a person who doesn’t deserve it, everyone knows it and your recognition program isn’t worth anything. In my opinon, the Nobel Peace Prize is an example of this. Although many of the Peace Prize winners make sense, look at a few recent winners: Yasser Arafat, former Vice President Al Gore, and President Barack Obama. In your mind, did those people do a lot for peace? In Gore’s case, the award seemed to have less to do with peace than it did on Gore’s work on man-made climate change. Nobel can present their prize to anyone they wish for any reason they wish, but I smell politics. I don’t think much of the Peace Prize any longer, but I wouldn’t turn it down. I could use the $100,000.
Many companies use an awards committee to review nominees. You must be careful of politics here, too. For a major award, hard performance numbers should be a part of the recommendation. In other words, you need to show that the award is truly deserved and have the data to back it up.
Lesser awards, like a prize parking place or a pin, can be awarded without committee action. I once set up a system where the direct supervisor could award a “Performance Pin” without any approval. The supervisor filled out a simple form and mailed it to my office. I sent a pin and a little card certificate with the employee’s name in Old English type for the supervisor to sign and present to the employee. Many times, I felt the employee deserved more and investigated the case to find out; I found a few. The supervisors never abused this system; employees wore the pins and liked to show them off. Several employees were awarded additional pins, and wore them all.
An award must also have meaning and value. With the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize is a good example of where the awards fit the recipients. Prizes are presented each year for achievement in the fields of science, economics, chemistry, and so forth. I’ve always been impressed by the awards and admired the people who received them. Wouldn’t it be great to receive the Nobel Prize for quality management? Don’t hold your breath.
When a Nobel Prize is presented for say, chemistry, we all accept it. I’m sure that some in the field are not pleased, but the rest of us don’t know if the person deserved it or not, we just accept it. Isn’t that wonderful? A person working in a dingy old laboratory is recognized for his or her outstanding work. That’s marvelous.
We all know the value of a gold Olympic medal. The recipient is showered with fame and money to endorse or be a spokesman for a product. Job and business opportunities abound. Even the athletes who didn’t win a medal can profit just by being in the Olympics. That’s the way it should be. They worked hard for it and they deserve it.
Sports and the military are probability the biggest award presenters. Campaign ribbons, medals for valor, World Series and Super Bowl rings, most valuable player (MVP) awards, and so on. All of these awards have obvious meaning and value, particularly when we can see the data and thinking behind the decision.
My grandson attended a summer football camp. At the end of camp, awards were presented for the MVP, most improved, teamwork, and so on; there were about twenty awards for the top players out of 150 boys. Pretty important awards, I’d say. When it came time to present the awards, all the boys gathered around in their sweaty practice clothes and waited, “Make it me” written all over thier faces. The awards were a medal on a ribbon, designed to wear around the neck. A very nice award and very important.
The award ceremony went something like this: The name of the winning player was called and he walked up to the coach. The coach handed the kid the medal and called the next name. See anything wrong here? Think of the Olympics. The athletes don’t have their awards handed to them. They stand on a platform while their national anthem is played. Oh, and the award is placed around their neck. Then, they shake hands with the presenter. Brings tears to you eyes, doesn’t it? That’s what the coach should have done.
The Nobel Prize people excel at presenting the prize. It’s a formal affair beyond belief; like a coronation. Everyone is in formal attire, and there are red carpets, speeches, money—wow. That’s impressive. That’s an award that is properly presented. Thinking back to the scientist who has spent year’s in his or her lab, hardly seeing the light of day, can you imagine what it must be like for them?
The military is also very good at the whole recognition thing. They have strict rules about who can receive an award—a medal, a cash award, a commendation—and they know how to present it. I was awarded The Outstanding Civilian Service Medal by the Army. I was invited to the Pentagon—with my wife—where I met with senior military people, had lunch with a four-star general, and was presented with the award. A group of officers and civilians gathered as a bird colonel read the citation. He pinned the medal to my coat, handed me a large certificate signed by General W. C. Westmoreland, and shook my hand. They did a bang-up job and I’ll never forget it. My medal hangs on the office wall and I wear the tiny rosette on my lapel. I framed the medal and wear the pin for me to remember, not to impress others.
Regardeless of the size of the award, a Nobel Prize or an Outstanding Performance Pin at your company, presentation is everything.
Presenting an award for outstanding performance does many things. It tells the person receiving the award that they did what you wanted them to do; it tells all employees—from management to line workers—that zero defects is your performance standard and it’s the kind of work you want. When you tell the rest of the world about the award, you are saying this is the kind of person who works at our company, and this is the kind of work we do.
Make certain that you observe all four of these simple rules. Don’t give an award to the wrong person. Set up a system to screen people nominated for an award. Do they really deserve it? Maybe come up with lesser awards for lesser accomplishments.
Design your award so that it means something to the person receiving it and to the rest of the world. When it comes time to present an award, don’t just hand it over, don’t mail it, don’t have an unimportant person present it. Make an event out of it. Gather important people around, invite the newspaper and TV people. Invite the mayor and your representative in congress. Have the person’s spouse and children attend if possible. Remember that I said “properly presented.” If the award is a parking place for thirty days, you don’t need to make a big deal out of it. A good parking place is like virtue, it’s its own reward.
You should design some kind of recognition system that really means something—that recognizes outstanding performance in a big way. After all, you asked for zero defects, so pony up when you get it. I’ve never thought much of “employee of the month” type awards. They seem to write off the previous winners—fifteen minutes of fame, I guess. It’s not a terrible idea, but I bet you can do better.
Put out announcements to every newspaper and TV station in the state. Notify your trade magazines. You never know who will print what. I’ve even seen Quality Digest Daily run short news stories on why and how a company team was given an award.
There’s nothing more to say, really. You should have a system to recognize outstanding performance by your employees and you should observe the four rules when doing it. You’ll benefit from it greatly.
Oh yeah, maybe one more thing. You might think about a zero defects award for that supplier who does an outstanding job. Suppliers are people, too.
Dave Crosby is president of The Crosby Company, a firm he created to develop and deliver software and training in the field of quality management. His SPC software was the first on the market for the personal computer. His books include, How To Get Your People to Do Things Right, Quality is Easy, How To Run a Zero Defects Program, and The Zero Defects Option.
Crosby served as corporate director of quality for RCA Corp., General Instruments Corp., and Portec Inc. He was awarded the “Outstanding Civilian Service Medal” by the U.S. Army for his work with the Army Zero Defects Program. His web site is www.zdoption.com.
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