Adrian Gostick

Last Friday Chester Elton and I spoke to the International Association of Speakers Bureaus—a group that helps meeting planners find the right content and presenters for their conferences.
After we finished speaking, Wolf Blitzer of CNN took the stage to interview speaking industry legend Don Walker, CEO of the Harry Walker Agency in NYC.

As background, Don’s 60-year-old agency is number one—representing such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bono, Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and other household names. After listening to Don for about three minutes, I grabbed a Fairmont Hotel pad and started scribbling notes. What he had to say was that good.
Don believes his industry is in the “marketplace of ideas.” And when is the need greater for the free-flow of thoughts and innovation than during a downturn in the economy? He said this meltdown might just make our businesses stronger in the end; yet he recalled the words of Winston Churchill, who after being told that losing an election might be a blessing in disguise, muttered, “Well, it’s well disguised.”
Don stressed the importance of working together with competitors to climb out of the morass, to continue attending association meetings and conferences to share best practices. He punctuated this point with an African saying, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Finally, Don reminded us that continuing education will help us become experts in our respective fields. “You don’t know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out,” he quipped. And right now, the tide is out. The economy is clearing the beach of pretenders. Only those who are serious about their crafts will remain behind.
The moral of Don’s message is this: Don’t abandon your friends. Attend your industry meetings, conventions and education sessions. Be an active part of the marketplace of ideas and you just might thrive.

Our friends Harry Paul (co-author of Fish!) and Ross Reck (of Revved!) share some great insights in their new book, Instant Turnaround. Their finding is that people regulate their effort based on how well they believe they are being treated at work. We can corroborate that with our research for the second edition of The Carrot Principle. We found globally that a sense of “well-being” at work was on the top two drivers of employee engagement. In other words, when employees believe their manager and company cares about them, they’ll put in more discretionary effort—which is exactly what you need in this economy.

Harry and Ross say that you can tell if you are using fear as a motivator—which is actually de-motivating in the long term. Ask yourself these four questions:

1. Do my employees look like they are glad to see me?
2. Do my employees smile most of the time?
3. Do my employees eagerly make eye contact with me?
4. Do I feel my employees have my best interests at heart?

If you answer no to one or more of these questions, it means you are using fear as a motivator. And that means your department is underachieving, which is costing you on your performance review.
Instant Turnaround is a fun, quick read—great for an airplane ride—and will give you plenty of fuel to keep you motivating in these difficult times.

Chester Elton and I felt good enough about the book to give it a nice endorsement on the back.

Update:Check out the video Harry and Ross produced to promote the book.

 

We relaunched The Carrot Principle Second Edition this week! The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller is now expanded with global research—the new 2nd Edition proves that recognition accelerates human performance everywhere in the world. We’ve had a ton of fun and have a great promotion for those who buy the book by the end of this week:

Here’s what you do:
1. Order a copy of the new book this week to qualify.
2. Use these B&N or Amazon links to purchase The Carrot Principle, Second Edition
3. Forward your Amazon or B&N confirmation email to .
4. Check your inbox for the link to your amazing bonus materials.

 

When you buy The Carrot Principle, Second Edition this week, you’ll receive:

• The Carrot Principle: New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book updated with global research findings and a new employee engagement study conducted during this recession.
• The Ultimate Innovator’s Digital Anthology featuring new video instruction from a host of management experts such as Stephen M. R. Covey and Mark Sanborn!
• Just-released white paper Performance: Accelerated, which provides the proof your boss needs to understand how recognition will drive employee engagement and business results.
• How-to audio interviews with some of the World’s Greatest Managers—hosted by The Carrot Principle co-author Chester Elton.
• A downloadable poster showing how to say ‘Thank you’ in 50 languages
• And much, much more!

PLUS! You’ll entered in a drawing for an all-expense-paid 3-day, 2-night trip to the annual Carrot Culture Recognition Summit in Boston—a $4500 value!

Buy today to get the bonus materials and thanks for your support!

 

We have been on Fox News a few times recently talking about The Carrot Principle. The guys behind the scenes grabbed a Garrett the Carrot and have been filming segments.

You may also want to check out Garrett’s facebook page, set up by the folks at Fox.
You can see where Garrett met lots of famous people.

Wells Fargo’s CEO was the first to begin to speak out against being forced to cancel recognition and incentive programs, but Texas Roadhouse’s CEO takes that argument one step further…. he REFUSED to cancel their incentive trip and masterfully articulates his decision, the metrics and ROI of the program, and the importance (and bottom-line benefits) of employee recognition—now more than ever—in this interview with CNBC. 

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Here’s the transcript:
Reporter:  Corporate conferences are under siege.  Hundreds of companies have cancelled their out of town meetings but Texas Roadhouse is bucking the trend.  With five days of lavish fun in San Francisco, they are saying it is crucial to business. 
Reporter:  These are my kind of people.  Here we are with G.J. Hart . . . How dare you have a good time?
G.J. Hart, President & CEO of Texas Roadhouse:  Well, ya, we are going to have a good time but we are also going to be serious about what we are all about.  We are all about our people and our culture, and our people are our biggest asset that we’ve got. And this investment in our people will yield us great returns.  We have a philosophy in our company that if we take care of our people, they will take care of our guests. That is exactly why this event is important in times like this.
Reporter: So spending the money you think is a good idea.  You’re not only not sorry about it but you think it is great.
Hart:  Listen, when you think about it, it is just like investing in anything.  You’ve got to give a little to get a lot.  In our mind we’ve got almost 40,000 folks out there that are doing it day in and day out and we want to recognize our front line folks from our managing partners which are single unit operators to we have our meat cutters that cut meat in every one of our restaurants to our bar tenders, the best of the best there and we absolutely think it is a great return on our investment.
We’re a predominantly a company owned story . . . about 275 of our restaurants are company owned.  In the early days we did more franchising but now it is predominantly a company owned story.
Reporter:  So when someone from Congress comes to you and tells you what are you doing . . . no one should be spending this money, which they have been doing to other companies, what do you say?  What are the metrics that you give them . . . look we are spending this money and here’s how it helps us.
Hart:  Listen, it is one thing that we recognize, we are in the service and hospitality business. A little known fact is that 2 out of every 5 jobs in America are associated with the hospitality business.  We, in this industry are the second largest employer to the government.  So, we believe that giving back and doing these types of things makes all the sense in the world.  By the way, it’s not just about what we are doing in San Francisco to celebrate and recognize and reward our own people, we also spend a full day everywhere we go in our conferences doing humanitarian work.  We spend over a million dollars in materials and labor today around the city of San Francisco.
Reporter:  What is your total spend on this?
Hart:  We spend between two and two and a half million dollars but as I said just a minute ago, we spend a million dollars in labor and materials on humanitarian, but I’ll tell you something else, I’m not sure it is enough. Times like this, these are the folks that make things happen.  These are not the executives.  These are the people that running our restaurants day in and day out around America.  At the end of the day, people still want to go out to eat and we believe that if we can execute on those fundamentals of what we do, our mission statement is legendary food and legendary service, we believe that we will continue to grow and we are continuing to grow and that is what this is about.  It’s about employment growth and that is what we are all about.